As
I've written
about before, I am always amazed when suddenly there is widespread
interest in, excitement over, and focus
on some
particular GPL violation. I've spent most of my adult life working
on copyleft compliance issues, so perhaps I've got an overly unique
perspective. It's just that I've seen lots of GPL violations every
single day since the late 1990s. Even now, copyleft compliance remains
a regular part of my monthly work. Even though it's now only one task
among many that I work on every day, I'm still never surprised nor
shocked by some violation.

When some GPL violation suddenly becomes a “big story”, it
reminds me of celebrity divorces. There are, of course, every single
day, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of couples facing the conclusion
that their marriage has ended. It's a tragedy for their
families, and they'll spend years recovering. The divorce impacts
everyone they know: both their families, and all their friends, too. Everyone's life who
touches the couple is impacted in some way or other.

Of course, the same is true personally for celebrities when they
divorce. The weird thing is, though, that people who don't even know
these celebrities want to read about the divorce and know the details.
It's exciting because the media tells us that we really want to know all
the details and follow the drama every step of the way. It's disturbing
that our culture sympathizes more with the pain of the rich and famous
than the pain of our everyday neighbors.

Like divorce, copyleft violations are very damaging, but failure to
comply with the copyleft licenses impacts three specific sets of people
who directly touch the issue: the people whose copyright are infringed,
the people who infringed the copyrights, and the people who received
infringing articles. Everyone else is just a
spectator0.

That said, my heart goes out to ever user who is sold software that
they can't study, improve and share. I'm doubly concerned when
those people were legally entitled to those rights, and
an infringer snatched them away by failing to comply with copyleft
licenses. I also have great sympathy for the individual copyright
holders who licensed their works under GPL, yet find many
infringers ignoring the rather simple and reasonable requirements of
GPL.

But, I don't think gawking has any value. My biggest post-mortem
complaint about SCO was not the FUD: that was obviously wrong and we
knew the community would prevail. The constant gawking took away time
that we could have spent writing more Free Software and doing good work
in the software freedom community. So, from time to time, I like to
encourage everyone to avoid gawking. (Unless, of course, you're doing
it with the GNU implementation of AWK. :)

So, when you read GPL violation stories, even when they seem novel,
remember that they're mundane tragedies. It's good someone's working on
it, but they don't necessarily deserve the inordinate attention that
they sometimes get.

Update, morning of 2012-09-18: Someone asked me to
state more clearly how I felt about Red Hat's GPL enforcement action
against TwinPeaks1. I carefully avoided saying that above last night, but
I suppose I'm going to get asked so often that I might as well say. Plus,
the answer is actually quite simple: I simply don't know until the action
completes. I only believe that GPL enforcement is morally legitimate if
compliance with the GPL is paramount above all other goals. I have never
seen Red Hat enforce the GPL before, so I don't know the pecking order of
their goals. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof in
the enforcement is whether compliance is obtained. In short, if I were
the Magic 8-Ball of
GPL compliance, I'd say “Reply hazy, ask again
later”2.

0 Obviously, there's a
large negative impact that many seemingly “small” GPL
violations, in aggregate, will together have on the entire software
freedom community. But, I'm examining the point narrowly in the main text
above. For example, imagine if the only GPL violation in the history of
the world were done by one company, on one individual's copyrights, and
only one customer ever purchased the infringing product. While I'd still
value pursuit of that violation (and I would even help such a
copyright holder pursue the matter), even I'd have to readily admit that
the impact on the software freedom community of that one violation is
rather limited.

Indeed, the larger policy impact of violations comes from the aggregate
effect. That's why I've long argued that it's important to deal with
the giant volume of GPL violations rather than focus on
any one specific matter, even if that matter looks like a
“big one”. It's just too easy sometimes to think one
particular copyright holder, or one particular program, or one
particular product deserves an inordinate amount of attention, but such
undue focus is likely an outgrowth of familiarity breeding a bit too
much contempt. I occasionally temporarily fall into that trap, so it
makes me sad when others do as well.

1 What bugs me most is that I
have yet to see a
good Twin Peaks
parody (ala Twin
Beaks) of this whole court case. I suppose I'm just too old; I was in
high school when the entire nation was obsessed with David Lynch's one hit
TV series.

2 cf15290cc2481dbeacef75a3b8a87014e056c256a1aa485e8684c8c5f4f77660