Linus talks about the loss of trust, community, and developers that plagued Busybox after their GPL enforcement lawsuit. I hadn't realized the consequences were so dire. That lawsuit is still sometimes held up as the GPL working as intended.
This is excellent. Thank you so much for posting that mail.
I definitely agree when he says threatening lawsuits just makes you look like a bully. Violence can be defined¹ as a measure taken to force an unwilling person to change their behavior. Based on this understanding, I think lawsuits are a form of violence: legal violence.
It takes real maturity to deal with the company the way they did. "Yeah, we're infringing your license, what you gonna do about it?" is a direct challenge that invites litigation. Clearly unacceptable behavior from a company that knows and admits its own guilt and uses its own impunity to make the developers look weak. Instead of taking them on, they worked with the company and convinced them to cooperate. I think that is a major example of constructive behavior.
"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" — Abraham Lincoln
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."
- Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib
There's nothing wrong with using force against someone who engages in abusive behavior and ignores valid requests to desist from doing so. Unprovoked violence is always bad. So is willful provocation, which is why the utterance of 'fighting words' is a valid defense to a charge of assault.
The lawsuit was a last resort. All of the organisations doing GPL compliance work in recent years have been after compliance first, following principles like these, even before those principles were written down:
Linus talks about the loss of trust, community, and developers that plagued Busybox after their GPL enforcement lawsuit. I hadn't realized the consequences were so dire. That lawsuit is still sometimes held up as the GPL working as intended.