And IMHO this is killing the license. Companies are doing the calculations and determining that by the time they get caught they can just negotiate at best and at worst just ignore it and drag things out until it realistically no longer matters. Without teeth no one will follow their obligations.
Some people say GPL is dying because nobody use it due to its terms.
Some people say GPL is dying because everyone use it but nobody follows its terms.
The truth is in somewhat in the middle. There is more GPL adoption out there than people think, but respecting terms is a nontrivial effort. Some infringements are done in good faith and resolved equitably once noted, but detection as a whole is undoubtedly difficult, and we only see the negative headlines when it happens. That doesn't mean the license is dying; in fact, it's doing the opposite: helping people out there building software in the open, and taking to task businesses that don't play fair. We just have to accept that success rate will just never be 100% compliance, because legal constructs never reach that.
This is true of almost all contracts. If respecting terms was easy, we'd have no needs for lawyers and courts.
- John Dev takes a bit of MIT/BSD licensed code. He drops an acknowledgment in the About screen (which nobody will ever read), and that's it. (yes, many still fail to do it...)
- Jane Dev takes a bit of (L)GPL licensed code. She has to add the license file to the installer, so the installer people start asking questions: "is this an eula? Should we display it on install?" Jane clarifies that we just need to ship it, but now Legal is in the loop. Legal goes "it says here that we have to provide stuff on request, does that mean all our private code?" Jane explains how she carefully used it in such a way to avoid that scenario; half of the explanation goes above the head of every lawyer in the room, so some of them trust her and some don't. Let's assume it gets greenlit, now we have to talk to the website folks to put a link somewhere - but Legal are still on the case: "ah, but we don't want to make it too easy, let's just have an email." Who's going to monitor that mailbox? Can you do it, Jane? Legal goes "no, Jane is technically not responsible for distributing, let's loop back in the release managers". Release managers don't want to hear it, they already have enough shit to shovel. By now half the people have gone on holiday one or more times, there are more urgent fires to put out, and the thread is forgotten. Product ships. Jane moves on to found her own startup. The product will likely be infringing for years, which may or may not ever be detected.
I love the GPL and I wish everyone used it and respected it, but it's not easy to live with it.
IANAL. Let's take VSCode as an example. At the very least, the license:
1. permits data collection on your machine.
2. restricts the user: no reverse engineering, no disassembly, no decompile. No alteration of any "notices" from MS (or others). No distribution (…ish, there are some exceptions? it's complicated?).
3. a $5 limit on damages, which is … interesting.
And to be fair to MS, I think this is one of the shorter and clearer proprietary licenses that I've found. But it is hardly "pay and you're set". (Hell, "pay" — the price is free^W your data, here.)
But a further part of the complication is the mere distinction of proprietary-ness of the license. The GPL is the GPL, and once I've read it, and made a decision on the terms of it, a piece of software can signal its license with "GPLv2" or such, and I can essentially get a cache-hit on my legal interpretation of the license. Every proprietary license is a cache-miss, and is thus immensely more time consuming to process.
Is it? Just give users the same source used to build the binaries.
But not all businesses pay close attention to open-source licenses.
I have to assume that scale has something to do with it. Huge companies usually take that pretty seriously. Tiny companies... eh, they might not even be aware.
You're giving companies way too much credit. Unless a company has been sued for something, they often have no insight into or awareness of it. Most companies do not have strict policies around using GPL or OSS. The legal, audit and compliance teams are only aware of things when it's brought to their attention.
Our company is very good about accessibility and ease of use in our products, but only because someone used the ADA to sue the shit out of us a decade ago.
I would wager that most GPL violations are made by folks who are consciously aware of what they're doing, and the companies they work for are completely unaware that such decisions are even being made. There's no actuary running the numbers and saying "yeah go ahead and violate it, litigation is cheaper than compliance", that's tinfoil hat level thinking IMO.
That's a legal tactic regardless of initial intent or guilt. If you thinking waiting someone out is cheaper than losing or settling, then you stall. It puts a financial burden on them.
I'm not saying it's right, and it's also not an indicator of guilt, malice, or forethought.
Additionally people seem to think of legal contracts and licenses as being set in stone or non negotiable. In the legal world they are simple the starting point for any negotiation.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm...
"Our primary goal in GPL enforcement is to bring about GPL compliance. Copyleft's overarching policy goal is to make respect of users' freedoms the norm. The GNU GPL's text is designed towards this end. Copyleft enforcement done in this spirit focuses on stopping incorrect distribution, encouraging corrected distribution, and addressing damage done to the community and users by the past violation. Addressing past damage often includes steps to notify those who have already received the software how they can also obtain its source code, and to explain the scope of their related rights. No other ancillary goals should supersede full compliance with the GPL and respect for users' freedoms to copy, share, modify and redistribute the software."
Again, I'm not supporting or encouraging the behavior. This is just the reality of the legal system.
If it weren't a win for both sides, the side that feels like it got the short end of the stick would opt for court.
The SFC's ongoing case against Vizio in California[1] appears to show that violators of the GNU GPL can be sued by users, not just copyright holders. If this case sets precedent elsewhere in the USA and even in other countries, then organisations like the FSF and SFC will have far more options in what violations they choose to litigate. However, this also opens up the risk of 'GPL trolls' who might not be motivated by the same principles[2].
https://sfconservancy.org/donate/
Their lawsuit against Vizio is especially interesting: