When I saw the last two sentences of the show notes:
… And if we don’t sue, what do we do? And who’s “we”, here?
I was really hoping you discuss the points I raised in my previous thread about developers vs end users.
You framed the question as a quarrel between those who value Linux above GPL (Linus et. al.), and those who do the opposite (Bradly et. al.). But I think a deeper discussion should involve a third group: those who don’t care about either, but want to have more control over their devices. This third group will indirectly benefit from a litigation, although they are not involved in the process whatsoever.
To me, it is more developers vs end-users than developers vs lawyers.
So, a balanced discussion should assess the harm we make by alienating companies from using/contributing to Linux, and the harm we make by depriving the public (the millions and billions of end users) of the freedoms GPL grants them.
The “GPL ethics” that Stuart was talking about is not designed to benefit the lawyers who file GPL violation lawsuits, but to benefit the end users who run GPL licensed software on their devices.
Even for Linus’s perspective that cares about more contribution to the kernel, SFC’s argument has a point: Those end-user who enjoy hacking their devices (should the source code is available) will be the next wave of people who contribute to Linux. Yes, it may take longer for those people to contribute than for the companies who may contribute to the kernel tomorrow, but it is a long-term investment on the viability of Linux. And by the way, it also ensures that users have freedom, in the way GPL entitles in the first place.