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Comment by ArcHound | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the spirit of this comment, but I worry about the implementation.

See the comment of Manly read in this section. Once the threat of payment approaches, you can just switch to a free fork. A single person can't really win a trial against a big, well-funded company.

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I don't really see how this is an issue, depending on the license text it's trivial to make the license apply in the same manner. As for winning, I think that's more of a US-centric view, if you sue elsewhere in the world there's plenty of courts that are happy to slap big tech.

Genuine question that might sound trollish: do you please have examples of such cases?

I think Jacobsen vs Katzer [0] is the most relevant one to the discussion here, but there a number of successful cases on this front. If memory serves, BusyBox has also managed to enforce GPL in court on a number of occasions.

[0] https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/jacobsen-v-katzer

Suing a major corporation still seems like quite a bit of work, and what's the end goal? Is it to humble a major company, or to get paid? Because if it's the latter, it feels like there are easier ways to do so.

This is obviously a subjective opinion, but at least in my mind, the point is to defend your rights. No one else is going to come along and defend you against the corporate steamroller.

They can fork it, but can they find the maintainers? If it's just their own internal employees, then they definitely have less expertise in that codebase.

Might as well hire the actual expert.

If the license were copyleft forking would not be a solution.

Fails the desert island test then.

But maybe that's fine. The world is different from 1980's. Different license approaches are needed and Richard Stallman is not God.

It's crazy. I used think his ideas were completely unrealistic and him being a general loon. He has certainly had the last laugh (or first tear, really). I still think he's definitely not correct on all fronts, but I pay more attention to his opinions on tech.

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