The Licensing & Compliance Team, running at full steam for your freedom
Quoting: The Licensing & Compliance Team, running at full steam for your freedom —
Last year, in our year-end writing, you met Krzysztof Siewicz (Kris), the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) licensing and compliance manager. Following his introduction, Kris went on to describe the issue of projects adding contradictory terms to GNU licenses, a subject matter with an importance that warrants revisiting. Since its publication, the licensing team has been doing important GPL stewardship work to uphold and defend the GNU licenses.
Now that Kris is settled in, the licensing team is picking up steam. Your support empowers the FSF to protect the GNU General Public License (GPL). We resolve problems with confusing derivatives of a GNU license in much the same way we approach enforcement for GPL violations, through our Principles of Community GPL Enforcement. That said, I am happy and proud to share that we've successfully closed two GPL stewardship cases this year so far, and with your support, we will continue to carry out this important work.
Following the enforcement principles, initially we don't view a potential infringement as intentional or malicious. Of course, we ultimately hope that a project using a confusing license will join us in embracing the spirit of computer user freedom in which the GPL and AGPL were written. What would normally be a violation can instead become a teaching moment for the authors of the confusing license and any downstream users using that program. Through our efforts, we hope to bring both camps to the free software movement.
To further spread awareness, Kris co-hosted a fireside chat at FOSDEM 2024 to discuss protecting users against confusing licensing. The chat elaborated on the GPLv3's Section 7, and how it allows the removal of further restrictions. It reiterated the message that the FSF may also enforce its copyrights and trademarks to stop unauthorized modifications to our licenses.