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Comment by JS_startup | Hacker News Reader

This is a perfect example of the Free Software movement's lack of teeth. Even if they do manage to get the money together to sue HTC, the company will have no problem demonstrating the type of bureaucratic structure that would make source code take four months to be released.

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It really doesn't matter what bureaucratic structure they claim. If they say it'll take four months to release the source code, fine, wait four months to release the binaries then.

GPL enforcement is a lot of work with expensive lawyers and made harder when you are not the copyright holder.

hint: this is why the FSF require copyright assignment for their project. But they have barely any on the Linux kernel, the principal matter in the Android source code.

Harald owns the copyright for significant part of netfilter/iptables. So if they distribute this part of the kernel, he won't have much trouble.

But he is mostly alone on it, so he can't deal with every case. Everything would be better if there was no need to do that :-(

Surely if they can find one part of the Linux kernel that the FSF has copyright to, then that opens the floodgates, and the full (legal) weight and force of the FSF can stand behind this? So so long as they have one part, they can fight this.

The FSF rarely engage in enforcement action themselves, even on works they hold copyright on. The Linux kernel has probably been more actively enforced than any GNU project, with the possible exception of gcc.

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