[ANNOUNCE] Statement of netfilter project on GPL enforcement

[ANNOUNCE] Statement of netfilter project on GPL enforcement

[Pablo Neira Ayuso]

The netfilter project [1] hereby declares its official endorsement of
the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement [2] (the
"Principles") as published by the Software Freedom Conservancy [3] and
the Free Software Foundation [4].

The software of the netfilter project is primarily released under the
GNU General Public License.  We strongly believe that license
compliance is an important factor in the Free Software model.  In the
absence of voluntary license compliance, license enforcement is a
necessary tool to ensure all parties adhere to the same set of fair
rules as set forth by the license.

On the other hand, we also believe that any enforcement action should
always be focused on compliance, never prioritize financial gain,
never settle for less than compliance and consider legal action in
court only as a last resort.

We, the undersigned, pledge to perform license enforcement only in
accordance with said "Principles".

We also invite and encourage any other former or current netfilter
developers and contributors to express their support for this
statement by co-signing it. Please contact coreteam@netfilter.org for
details.

Amsterdam, June 29, 2016,

Pablo Neira Ayuso (head of core team)
Jozsef Kadlecsik (core team member)
Florian Westphal (core team member)
Eric Leblond (core team member)
Harald Welte (emeritus core team member)

A full copy of this statement and the "Principles“ is available on our
website [5].

[1] http://www.netfilter.org
[2] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html
[3] https://sfconservancy.org
[4] https://www.fsf.org
[5] http://www.netfilter.org/files/statement.pdf