Some posts are so week that they barely deserve a reply. Your
reasoning here falls into that category. However, I will reply
nevertheless.
"Doing gnu enforcement" doesn't imply solely lawyers' work. There
is clearly and obviously non-lawyers' work involved, all the way from
high level meetings deciding strategy right down to dropping letters
into the nearest postbox.
Yes, a like like this alone is enough to give us evidence to pursue
an enforcement case -- no question about that.
However, it's an EXTREME "gotcha" on a GPL violation if someone's
*actual* copyright notice appears in the 'strings' output on binary.
This is because the violator, by distributing the work with your
copyright notice in place, has made a clear statement that they knew
the work was copyrighted by you.
It's basically the perfect egg-on-the-face moment, because they are
admitting fully in their *own distribution* that they've infringed
your copyright.
So many times, violators argue that they didn't know what was in
there, etc. When the Copyright notice appears right in the binary,
they start the negotiation at a serious disadvantage from the start.
Also, there is the added bonus that if the default 'make' of busybox
generates a copyright notice that's left in the binary, the
violator would have to go through hoops to remove it. Should they
ever do this, it would be good evidence that they had engaged in
*willful* infringement of your copyright.
As I understand it (Norwood can confirm), this allows for a stronger
set of penalties in the courts when someone engages in willful
copyright infringement. Of course, our goal is to get compliance
without ever going to court, but having a bigger lever during that
negotiation is always an aid.
The copyright notice for the binary need not list every copyright
holder; it'd be enough to say:
"Copyright (C) YEAR-2006 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, and others.
Licensed under GPLv2. See source distribution for full notice."
-- bkuhn