And you think by not punishing such companies then they'll come in to compliance?
It strikes me such companies never intended to comply with their legal obligations - make that position financially untenable and use the money to support development/developers who are compliant.
Most companies will see a lawsuit as an attack, and blacklist interacting with you in the future if they can. It reflects badly on the FOSS community, and makes future interactions even more difficult. There are a lot of businesses that will fight relying on any FOSS product, but leap at precisely the same thing with a paid license.
However, more polite requests usually get canned without reading.
This is a tough problem, with hypersensitive businesses thrown in the mix. Wielding the GPL like a hammer won't help, but ignoring it won't either.
>Most companies will see a lawsuit as an attack, and blacklist interacting with you in the future if they can. It reflects badly on the FOSS community, and makes future interactions even more difficult. There are a lot of businesses that will fight relying on any FOSS product
The companies that will strip out FOSS from all of their products will have to cripple their product, increase their lead times and increase their costs - possibly all three.
If FOSS is competing with their closed source product, that makes FOSS more competitive. If companies that respect FOSS compete with their product, that makes them more competitive. These are good things.
I don't think it pays to accommodate companies with laywers that behave irrationally in response to enforcement of the GPL and it certainly doesn't pay to respond to bully tactics by relenting.
When Microsoft sues companies for using pirate Windows, they extort extra fines and payments and put people in jail. It doesn't seem to hurt them. FSF position is weak. If you're not fighting with claws and teethes, strong ones won't respect you, they'll continue to abuse you just to "comply" if they got caught and sued.
Verizon got caught breaching the GPL with Busybox.[!] At the end of the day, they agreed to become compliant... And Busybox is no longer a product they use or distribute. [0][1]
Your link [1] has a link to a page with the Actiontec firmware downloads that includes Busybox. They clearly are still distributing it and are following the complience agreement. This appears to be an example that is the direct opposite of what you were trying to show.
