I didn’t know about or follow any of that, so your links were helpful. Thanks!
After looking into this and reading your three links, I couldn’t find a conclusive answer to my follow up question, so maybe you know: did the Linux Foundation ever serve a legal purpose of pursuing copyright violations and take point in defending the copyright holders that contributed to the Linux Kernel?
Near as I can tell, it appears to be largely up to individual copyright holders.
Even that agreement seems to be an article of trust from individuals saying they’ll abide by the extra paragraphs and not doggedly pursue copyright violations so long as violators act in good faith about taking corrective action in a timely manner.
The "leadership" of Linux foundation, have been (and I am paraphrasing) quoted at various talks on the subjects in Q & A;s saying they can not conceive of a scenario for which they would choose legal action over attempting non-legal action (such as Public naming, PR campaign's etc). They simply reject using the legal system to enforce the license.
i am not aware of any legal action the Linux foundation, or anyone in the leadership of said has participated in, in a few instances, like the one that lead to the Enforcement Statement they have actively tried to kill the legal action.
The Enforcement Statement is vague purposefully as to what "good faith", and purposefully never spells out when it is OK to move to the courts... because in their view that answer is never
So in other words the Linux Foundation is not a litigious organization and therefore contributors must enforce their copyrights on their own to the extent that they are interested in them. I’m not intimately familiar with this organization but if they weren’t organized as a legal foundation to pursue copyright enforcement of Linux source code then it makes sense they’re never involved in lawsuits like this. It could very well just be outside its core purpose and well I guess that just makes sense since contribute retain the rights to their code and being a contributor doesn’t automatically establish an attorney-client relationship.
I managed to filter through all the SCO and most of the non-Linux lawsuit stuff gumming up Google and near as I can tell, the only lawsuits involving copyright violations are or Linux specifically are pursued by individuals or agencies like SFC.
So given all that I would read this enforcement statement as a PR move more than a definite article, less “this list of people is effectively giving up their copyright” and more “so you know that one jackass? Well this lot undersigned here won’t be like him. Please don’t stop supporting and using Linux.”
Just as an aside, what constitutes “good faith” is something that can and usually is regardless of whatever contract or license is in effect litigated in court.
After looking into this and reading your three links, I couldn’t find a conclusive answer to my follow up question, so maybe you know: did the Linux Foundation ever serve a legal purpose of pursuing copyright violations and take point in defending the copyright holders that contributed to the Linux Kernel?
Near as I can tell, it appears to be largely up to individual copyright holders.
Even that agreement seems to be an article of trust from individuals saying they’ll abide by the extra paragraphs and not doggedly pursue copyright violations so long as violators act in good faith about taking corrective action in a timely manner.