Linus Torvalds Excoriates Software Freedom Conservancy
OK, Linus. So without lawyers, you know, the people who understand the legal system and matters involving legal instruments like licenses, how will you discuss GPL enforcement? Without people who know how to argue in courts, what will you do when sued?<p>Will the Linux Foundation be representing itself pro se from now on? Are you going to send software engineers to explain to judges why they&#x27;re smarter than lawyers, that is, the group of people to whom those judges belong and most clearly understand?<p>&quot;Lawyers are all uniformly evil and scary&quot; is a canard. So is &quot;all lawsuits are bad and unjustified.&quot; It is a gross misunderstanding of the legal system and a classic case of domain knowledge not equaling general knowledge. Linus Torvalds is a brilliant programmer, but as I&#x27;ve said before on this site, that does not make him like unto a god, and it doesn&#x27;t excuse him this ignorance. Yes, sometimes lawsuits destroy. And certainly it is possible that the SFC and Bradley Kuhn are just as bad as he says... but he is making no proposals about what to replace them with. All I see is &quot;boo lawyers suck&quot; rhetoric and the usual Linus Torvalds arrogance and anger.<p>&gt; Lawsuits destroy community. They destroy trust. They would destroy all the goodwill we&#x27;ve built up over the years by being nice.<p>Goodwill means nothing when the law is being broken. It means nothing when licenses are not being enforced. Lawsuits can be used and abused by The Man (TM), big corporations or government or whomever, but they can also be used by you to get recompense when you have been hurt. In fact, that&#x27;s primarily what they&#x27;re supposed to be for. One day, Linus may need the people who don&#x27;t take litigation personally, who don&#x27;t see it in terms of wrecking community but in terms of protecting communities. He&#x27;s doing a great job now of alienating those people.<p>The stance he&#x27;s taken will make corporate sponsors love him, for sure - but that&#x27;s because they&#x27;ll see a guy who&#x27;s scared of and angry at the system, but who also doesn&#x27;t trust it enough to seek help. They&#x27;ll see somebody who&#x27;d rather &quot;be nice&quot; and &quot;build community&quot; than protect what&#x27;s theirs. (Ironic, given how outspoken Linus is about not being nice.) Then, they&#x27;ll take it.<p>(Edit: I removed a personal insult aimed at Linus. I need to practice what I preach.)