On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 09:14:52 +1300, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'Unfortunately, "as far as I can tell, it's Patrick McHardy's legal right to bring such claims regarding the copyrights which he owns, even if it doesn't fit Community Principles which nobody is actually compelled to follow."'
I would say that’s an incentive for the kernel developers to dump his code as soon as they can. On the other hand, the kernel developers seem reluctant to even consider the possibility of suing anybody at any point. Yes, lawsuits do tend to make you look bad -- even after you have bent over backwards to try to ensure compliance over many years <https://lwn.net/Articles/311142/>. But ultimately the threat has to be real, because that is the only way to keep these big companies in line.