Embedding Bazaar into C/C++ applications

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Russel Winder writes:

 > > Good god, man, get a hold of yourself.
 > 
 > I'm afraid I am in full command.  I have been involved in three
 > incidents of this sort of bullying by large companies, and I find it a
 > real and present threat.

Of course it's a real and present threat, and I will assume that in
your case those complaints were entirely baseless and you were in no
way infringing on anybody's IP.  Indeed, that's a species of
extortion.  But!

Be thankful it's a threat of due process.  In my host country,
powerful entities have been documented to hire gangsters to drive cars
into your living room to get you to accede to what they want -- while
the kids are playing there.  So all power is double-edged.  Any threat
can be used by the rich to extort; copyright litigation is no
different.

Remember, also, that your rights as an author and as a user under the
GPL are in the end protected only by the threat of litigation.  If
that threat were not present, those same companies would simply ignore
the GPL.  To imply that the rightful threat of litigation is
extortion, as you did, is wrong, and only undermines one of the few
tools that open source software has for protecting itself and its
community.