Journal goldfndr's Journal: Adding teeth to the GPL?
In some ways, these Free Software Foundation "enforcement actions" can be more dangerous than a typical copyright spat, because usually copyright holders seek money--say, royalties on the product that infringing companies are selling. But the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners.
Analogies aside, a possible fix to this would be to add a clause in the GPL (or call it some other license, perhaps there already is something like this) that, for the specific author's particular copyrighted adds/changes:
An amount no less than ___________ paid to one particular author may be adequate to obtain full non-exclusive rights to said author's adds/changes.
While there is probably no case law that justifies mentioning any premeditated amount (think patent lawsuits and/or a future wherein a particular country's currency is worthless), I've read that some courts are hesitant to award a remedy for a copyright infringement if the plaintiff cannot name a particular dollar amount for damages - IIRC, one case in particular was in relation to an author who'd written some "open textbooks" and found that a publisher was distributing them on CD-ROM without giving the author the due credit required by the license.
Maybe having a lower bound is better than no lower bound?
Adding teeth to the GPL? More Login
Adding teeth to the GPL?
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