>> The funding bodies want us to detail all expenses and justify all the changes in the plan, because they don't want people to say that the public funds are mismanaged. This is just an example. We also write tons of useless papers, to justify that we are productive with this money.
That has always been the case. The alternative would be to disclaim the GPL and face straight copyright infringement, which in the US can be as high as $150K per copy. No company making wide use of GPL and infringing it would want to go the copyright route.
The GPL is not really dangerous except to someone with no legal clue who is deliberately ripping off free software.
Oh my bad. The wording is per infringement, which does seem to mean per work rather than per copy. That makes it perfect for going after individuals but not corporations - because it's peanuts to them.
It might be peanuts if it was a one-time thing, but if they kept infringing I would expect they could be sued again for the additional infringements.
Statutory damages in the US start out in the $750-30000 range, and can be raised up to $150000 in the case of willful infringement. The burden of proving willfulness is on the plaintiff, but that shouldn't be too hard if the defendant already lost once and is continuing to infringe.
I'd expect courts to start going higher and higher up the range for damages the more times they see the same defendant losing for continued infringement of the same work.
I'd expect that this would get the defendants to start complying with the license and release the source.
Companies should be more worried about injections than infringement. Sure they might pay court fines, but courts can also order them to stop infringing immediately. Continuing to infringe after a court order is a very different issue, and isn't about copyright law it anymore.
That has always been the case. The alternative would be to disclaim the GPL and face straight copyright infringement, which in the US can be as high as $150K per copy. No company making wide use of GPL and infringing it would want to go the copyright route.
The GPL is not really dangerous except to someone with no legal clue who is deliberately ripping off free software.