revision system, telling your developers to use it, and requiring your

build guru to document his or her work!

\chapter{When The Letter Comes}

Unfortunately, many GPL violators ignore their obligations until they are

contacted by a copyright holder or the lawyer of a copyright holder.  You

should certainly contact your own lawyer if you have received a letter

alleging that you have infringed copyrights that were licensed to you

under the GPL\@.  This section outlines a typical enforcement case and

provides some guidelines for response.  These discussions are

generalizations and do not all apply to every alleged violation.

\section{Understanding Who's Enforcing}

\label{compliance-understanding-whos-enforcing}

% FIXME-LATER: this text needs work.

Both  FSF and Conservancy has, as part their mission,  to spread software

freedom. When FSF or Conservancy

enforces GPL, the goal is to bring the violator back into compliance as

quickly as possible, and redress the damage caused by the violation.

That is FSF's steadfast position in a violation negotiation --- comply

with the license and respect freedom.

However, other entities who do not share the full ethos of software freedom

as institutionalized by FSF pursue GPL violations differently.  Oracle, a

company that produces the GPL'd MySQL database, upon discovering GPL

violations typically negotiates a proprietary software license separately for

a fee.  While this practice is not one that FSF nor Conservancy would ever

consider undertaking or even endorsing, it is a legally way for copyright

holders to proceed.

Generally, GPL enforcers come in two varieties.  First, there are

Conservancy, FSF, and other ``community enforcers'', who primary seek the

policy goals of GPL (software freedom), and see financial compensation as

ultimately secondary to those goals.  Second, there are ``for-profit

enforcers'' who use the GPL as a either a crippleware license, or sneakily

induce infringement merely to gain proprietary licensing revenue.

Note that the latter model \texit{only} works for companies who hold 100\% of

the copyrights in the infringed work.  As such, multi-copyright-held works

are fully insulated from these tactics.

\section{Communication Is Key}

GPL violations are typically only escalated when a company ignores the

copyright holder's initial communication or fails to work toward timely

copyright holders to make sure everyone agrees on targets and deadlines

for resolving the situation.

Ensure that any staff who might receive communications regarding alleged

GPL violations understands how to channel the communication appropriately

within your organization.  Often, initial contact is addressed for general

correspondence (e.g., by mail to corporate headquarters or by e-mail to

general informational or support-related addresses).  Train the staff that

processes such communications to escalate them to someone with authority

to take action.  An unknowledgable response to such an inquiry (e.g., from

a first-level technical support person) can cause negotiations to fail

prematurely.

Answer promptly by multiple means (paper letter, telephone call, and

email), even if your response merely notifies the sender that you are

investigating the situation and will respond by a certain date.  Do not

let the conversation lapse until the situation is fully resolved.

Proactively follow up with synchronous communication means to be sure

communications sent by non-reliable means (such as email) were received.

Remember that the software freedom community generally values open communication and

cooperation, and these values extend to GPL enforcement.  You will

generally find that software freedom developers and their lawyers are willing to

have a reasonable dialogue and will work with you to resolve a violation

once you open the channels of communication in a friendly way.

\section{Termination}

Many redistributors overlook GPL's termination provision (GPLv2~\S~4 and

GPLv3~\S~8).  Under v2, violators forfeit their rights to redistribute and

modify the GPL'd software until those rights are explicitly reinstated by

the copyright holder.  In contrast, v3 allows violators to rapidly resolve

some violations without consequence.

If you have redistributed an application under GPLv2\footnote{This applies

  to all programs licensed to you under only GPLv2 (``GPLv2-only'').

  However, most so-called GPLv2 programs are actually distributed with

  permission to redistribute under GPLv2 \emph{or any later version of the

    GPL} (``GPLv2-or-later'').  In the latter cases, the redistributor can

  choose to redistribute under GPLv2, GPLv3, GPLv2-or-later or even

  GPLv3-or-later.  Where the redistributor has chosen v2 explicitly, the

  v2 termination provision will always apply.  If the redistributor has

  chosen v3, the v3 termination provision will always apply.  If the

  redistributor has chosen GPLv2-or-later, then the redistributor may want

  to narrow to GPLv3-only upon violation, to take advantage of the

  termination provisions in v3.}, but have violated the terms of GPLv2,

you must request a reinstatement of rights from the copyright holders

before making further distributions, or else cease distribution and