Being active doesn't matter, the copyright holders still hold the copyright.
How much they profit off the stolen portion is also questionable, and open source licenses weren't meant to extort money but to grant us rights to the code. What they should do is add attributions and fix their licensing (libogc needs to be GPLv2), or remove the code. Willingly, yesterday.
I was thinking more "is it possible to contact them." When I googled RTEMS I found that it's originally an OS for missile systems from 1993 O_o
But I disagree. It's not extorting money to sue someone who stole your code and deliberately removed your copyright notices. The open source license only gives you the right to use the work for commercial purposes AS LONG AS you comply with the terms of the license. If you don't, then you're illegally profiting off stolen work. You can't violate the terms of a contract while still benefiting from it.
I don't know how much was stolen here, but if it's foundational enough to the project that HBC had to give up development, then they might have a case, but IANAL. Not doing anything though would mean letting them get away with their ill-gotten gains (again - if true), and I just don't think that's right. Like I said, I've seen similar things happen before and it pisses me off.
The opinion that parent was expressing is much the same as the motivation behind the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement[1], which are endorsed by all the GPL enforcement initiatives.
The principles acknowledge that copyright allows GPL violators to be sued for financial damages, as you point out in your post. However, they also take into account that lawsuits don't necessarily further the goals of software freedom, because excessive litigation could disincentivize people from using free software out of fear of mistakenly falling into non-compliance. As a result, it's better for free software to give violators many chances to comply and to provide guidance towards this where possible, and also seek injunctions rather than financial remedies if the court with jurisdiction allows it.
The principles are well worth a read; they explain a lot about how organizations such as the Software Freedom Conservancy operate, and why the few lawsuits which they do bring are so weird.
It's also worth noting that these principles are sometimes considered extreme within the free software community from the other side, which argues that the GPL should never be litigated!
> excessive litigation could disincentivize people from using free software
> argues that the GPL should never be litigated
If you search around though you will find many posts on lawyers' websites and other places that argue it is possible to actually lose your own copyright/trademark/IP protections by failing to enforce/litigate them.
What good is a license that will not be enforced? It's more of a suggestion at that point because people will inherently take advantage of you otherwise, it is a fundamental part of capitalism, which, FOSS zealots often seem to be strongly against capitalism themselves in general, but that's of course not how the world works today.
> If you search around though you will find many posts on lawyers' websites and other places that argue it is possible to actually lose your own copyright.
Citation needed. You can lose an unused trademark through misuse. You cannot lose copyright. Impossible. You can willingly relinquish something to the public domain. But that's it.
Lopez v. Electrical Rebuilders, Inc., 416 F.Supp. 1133, 1135 (C.D.Cal.1976). Acquiescence, with full knowledge in the publication of a vast number of copies without copyright notice, may work a forfeiture.
Transgo, Inc. v. Ajac Transmission Parts Corp., 768 F.2d 1001, 1019, 227 USPQ 598, 82 A.L.R.Fed 97 (C.A.9 (Cal.), 1985). Publication by a licensee of “vast numbers of copies without copyright notice may work a forfeiture” if done with full knowledge of a licensor who acquiesces.
The limitations period for bringing copyright infringement claims is three years after the claim accrues. See 17 U.S.C. S 507(b)
I have also seen several times where a project owner is made aware (e.g. via mailing list or github issue etc.) of an infringement and then they make a comment like "we do not have the money to fight this", and so then if three years passes after that point, the infringer basically gets away with it.
Also, most people do not register their copyrights, which:
Failure to Register Before Enforcement: In the U.S., while copyright protection is automatic, you must register the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office before you can file a lawsuit for infringement in federal court. You have no proof that you own a copyright if you do not file for one. If you try to enforce it before you register the copyright, it can later become invalidated, or its validation process can be terminated.
Those have nothing to do with losing copyright. Forgetting to file for copyright, sure. But not losing copyright you have.
If you have standing and you don’t sue for lack of money, of course the infringer gets away with it! Your right was not extinguished though. You don’t have the right to bludgeon others, you have the exclusive right to copy.
Semantics... I consider the rightsholder generally acknowledging any infringement but not doing anything about any of it, combined with other people getting away with infringing, as functionally equivalent to "losing" the copyright. You might disagree but that's okay.
Try telling that to a lawyer. Not enforcing your exclusive privileges does not extinguish your rights. People don't lose the right to vote if the government refuses to enforce election fraud.
You are wrong in the legal sense, and copyright is a very legal matter.
I think you are assuming that by "lose" I meant indefinitely, and for any and all future cases... but I explicitly defined what I meant, which was the cases where the rightsholder was made aware of an infringement, chose not to litigate, and then the statute expired, leading to a functional equivalence of losing the copyright in that one instance. I think a lawyer would appreciate the detail, and I don't think I am on trial for my own semantics here either, so I'm not sure what the actual disagreement is, besides that you don't like the way I used the word "lose".
Note that copyright holders for an open source project is often a very long list of people that would all need to approve of having their contribution relicensed. It's a bit of a complicated matter.
Considering attribution was removed, I doubt it was approved, but it's not impossible that they somehow learnt and decided not to care as enforcement can be unreasonably cumbersome.
How much they profit off the stolen portion is also questionable, and open source licenses weren't meant to extort money but to grant us rights to the code. What they should do is add attributions and fix their licensing (libogc needs to be GPLv2), or remove the code. Willingly, yesterday.