Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks

Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by yingw787 on Monday March 11, 2019 @05:40PM (#19363119)

Maybe. At least our company won't touch GPL code; as one colleague described to me, if you violate a proprietary license, a company will come after you for money, while violating a GPL license gets the EFF involved who will come after you for your source code.

I'm still wary, though. I could imagine if the resultant fines or source code releases from violating a GPL license weren't a strong enough deterrent, you could win by using a GPL-licensed product enough, then parry off attacks from EFF/FSF until you do a complete rewrite of the product underneath, then pay the fine/contribution to EFF/FSF while toppling the original company. If the company is big enough, and can afford enough good lawyers, there may be legal ways to get around laws.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7572332

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by geofft on Monday March 11, 2019 @07:26PM (#19363897)

(Usually not the EFF; more likely Software Freedom Conservancy or someone. EFF is more digital rights and privacy stuff, not copyright.)

A copyright holder can't get anything more from you by using the GPL. Infringement is infringement. The difference is that a company is usually happy to settle in exchange for a properly paid license, and an open source hacker instead is happy to settle in exchange for complying with the license. You're always free to take it to court and pay the damages from infringement, but you're not going to end up with a valid license in either case, so you'll have to stop distributing the software.

The actual difference, probably, is that you're a (moral) competitor of the open source hacker, and if you're not a competitor of the proprietary company, they have no interest in undermining the secrecy of your code or causing you to go out of business, even if the could potentially force that if they went to court. They're likely to consider "pay us a percentage of revenues" as a win condition.

Also, lawyers are not like Pokemon. You cannot beat the opposing team's lawyers by having more stronger lawyers. You can certainly lose by having bad lawyers, but you can only be guaranteed to win by being in the right.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by james_s_tayler on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:01PM (#19364131)

You can't actually be guaranteed to win by being in the right. You can be in the right and lose.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by nordsieck on Monday March 11, 2019 @08:39PM (#19364341)

>> Also, lawyers are not like Pokemon. You cannot beat the opposing team's lawyers by having more stronger lawyers. You can certainly lose by having bad lawyers, but you can only be guaranteed to win by being in the right.

> You can't actually be guaranteed to win by being in the right. You can be in the right and lose.

What he's obviously saying is that there is a seriously decreasing marginal benefit to more expensive (and presumably competent) lawyers.

It's better to have competent lawyers and be right than have amazing lawyers and be wrong.

Obviously there are shades of grey, nuisance lawsuits are a thing, etc.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by james_s_tayler on Monday March 11, 2019 @09:14PM (#19364506)

Well his intention is clear. But stating you are guaranteed to win if you are in the right strikes me as naive at best and woefully neglectful of reality at worst.

It's probably best stated like "lawyers are not _always_ like Pokemon". Sometimes they very definitely are.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by geofft on Monday March 11, 2019 @10:10PM (#19364755)

Yeah, my phrasing was sloppy: you're not guaranteed to win whenever you're in the right. But being in the right is a precondition of being guaranteed to win (along with having competent lawyers, a competent judge, etc.).

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by kevin_thibedeau on Monday March 11, 2019 @05:48PM (#19363167)

The only claimants to your source code are those to whom you've distributed binaries built from GPL sources. Anyone else can pound sand.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by ktjfi on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:00PM (#19363283)

If you were the author of a GPL piece of code whose licence was violated, and the EFF came to you and said "we'll pay for the lawyers and in exchange we get publicity", most people would say yes.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by hisham_hm on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:11PM (#19363381)

not the case for AGPL: then it's everyone who has access to your online service built with the code.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by j16sdiz on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:11PM (#19365054)

I don't think it works like that.

This is a copyright license at its heart. It is a contract between the copyright-owner and the service owner. The end user is just 3rd party.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by TeMPOraL on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @03:34AM (#19366104)

Wait, isn't the whole point of AGPL that the "user" entitled to the source code is now the service user, i.e. potentially everyone?

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by lvh on Monday March 11, 2019 @06:38PM (#19363567)

That's true, but GGP comment mentioned AGPL presumably for a reason :)

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by michaelmrose on Monday March 11, 2019 @09:26PM (#19364566)

You actually can't magically lose your rights to code you created. You could rewrite your code so it doesn't depend on gpl code if you found you had included code you had no right to.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by admax88q on Thursday March 14, 2019 @07:57AM (#19388391)

I mean if you're planning to violate the license then does it really matter what the license is? Your company sounds shady if you evaluate software icenses based upon how much it will hurt when you violate them.

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Re:Nginx to Be Acquired by F5 Networks by detaro on Thursday March 14, 2019 @07:59AM (#19388403)

There's a difference between "planning to violate the license" and worrying about what happens if you do because someone didn't pay attention.

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