[ANSOL-geral] Community-oriented GPL Enforcement Guidelines

[André Isidoro Fernandes Esteves]

A OSI, A FSF e a Organização para a preservação da liberdade no software 
em conjunto publicaram as linhas mestre para a imposição do respeito 
pela GPL por comunidades.

http://opensource.org/node/772
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-conservancy-publish-principles-for-community-oriented-gpl-enforcement
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/01/compliance-principles/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Importance of Community-oriented GPL Enforcement

  Submitted by masson on Fri, 2015-10-16 06:29
The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have 
released a statement of principles on how GPL enforcement work can and 
should be done in a community-oriented fashion. The president of the 
Open Source Initiative, Allison Randal, participated as a co-author in 
the drafting of the principles, together with the leadership of FSF and 
Conservancy.

The Open Source Initiative's mission centers on advocating for and 
supporting efforts to improve community best practices, in order to 
promote and protect open source (founded on the principles of free 
software). While the OSI's work doesn't include legal enforcement 
actions for the GPL or any of the family of licenses that conform to the 
Open Source Definition, we applaud these principles set forth by the FSF 
and Conservancy, clearly defining community best practices around GPL 
enforcement.

The vast majority of users, modifiers, and redistributors of free 
software and open source comply with the licenses of the software they 
consume, a task that has been greatly simplified in recent years thanks 
to the wide availability of tools and data resources to help with 
compliance, available under free software, open source, and open content 
licenses. Compliance failures that do occur are frequently honest 
mistakes, which can be repaired with some gentle guidance and an offer 
of education. Litigation around free software and open source license 
compliance is very rare, as it should be. But sometimes, litigation is 
necessary to protect free software and open source, not only for the 
benefit of current users, but also to support our communities in their 
chosen means and mode of collaboration, and for the long-term 
preservation of our principles in legal systems around the world.

When GPL enforcement (or any free software and open source license 
enforcement) is done in a way that isn't community-oriented, that action 
can be actively harmful to freedom-focused communities, and to the 
relationship of trust between our projects and their individual, 
organizational, and corporate users. That relationship of trust is 
absolutely essential to the success of free software and open source. 
Clearly defining the principles of community-oriented GPL enforcement, 
and what redistributors can expect if they are contacted by one of these 
organizations about a potential GPL violation, is an important step of 
progress in community best practices, and helps make it clear that free 
software and open source is the safest choice for collaborative software 
development. This statement of principles for GPL enforcement is also a 
valuable example of the kind of principles that should apply in 
community-oriented enforcement activity across the entire family of free 
software and open source licenses, with some variation in detail for the 
specific terms of other copyleft licenses and permissive licenses.

For more information, see FSF's announcement and Conservancy's 
announcement. A copy of the principles document will be hosted both on 
Conservancy's website and on FSF's website.