> (If you've never read it, i suggest you go read the various threads where linus, etc explain that in practice, the only approach that works is carrot, not stick) [...]
> If you (or others here) dream is of an ecosystem where everyone is forced, under pain of death, to follow the GPL, it's pretty unrealistic. It's not what happens now, it will never happen.
Kuhn's argument is that the actual world has involved the stick and not (just) the carrot: GPL enforcement lawsuits have actually existed, and we can't really distinguish people who claim to believe in the carrot from people who would totally have ignored the GPL if it weren't for the realistic threat of lawsuits.
We do live in a world where people are forced under pain of copyright infringement lawsuits to follow the GPL. It is literally what happens now. As you yourself pointed out upthread, Google is quite conscientious about following the GPL, to the point of rewriting proprietary drivers. Even Debian doesn't do that (Nvidia, Broadcom, etc. drivers are available in non-free). Do you think that's because Google thinks the GPL is a great idea? No! Google knows that losing their license to use the Linux kernel is a real possibility under GPLv2 section 4, and would in fact be death for the company.
> If you (or others here) dream is of an ecosystem where everyone is forced, under pain of death, to follow the GPL, it's pretty unrealistic. It's not what happens now, it will never happen.
And in response, see Bradley Kuhn's talk at LibrePlanet this year: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/understanding-... or the LWN writeup at https://lwn.net/Articles/719610/
Kuhn's argument is that the actual world has involved the stick and not (just) the carrot: GPL enforcement lawsuits have actually existed, and we can't really distinguish people who claim to believe in the carrot from people who would totally have ignored the GPL if it weren't for the realistic threat of lawsuits.
We do live in a world where people are forced under pain of copyright infringement lawsuits to follow the GPL. It is literally what happens now. As you yourself pointed out upthread, Google is quite conscientious about following the GPL, to the point of rewriting proprietary drivers. Even Debian doesn't do that (Nvidia, Broadcom, etc. drivers are available in non-free). Do you think that's because Google thinks the GPL is a great idea? No! Google knows that losing their license to use the Linux kernel is a real possibility under GPLv2 section 4, and would in fact be death for the company.