How jerkish has FSF been historically?
Zero. In all the moves I'm aware from them, they were right and dropped the charges in the exact instant that offender complied to the claims.
Have they ever aggressively litigated someone that acted in good faith because of the fine print?
No that I'm aware off.
They seem pretty reasonable to me. Seem to go after corporations that profit from GPL, and flagrantly. When your legal team works pro-bono, I suppose that you have to prioritize...
They are reasonable.
Our problem is that - if we are going to violate the GPL, why bothering using it? We would be the ones in bad faith.
Moreover, Hangar would be liable by hosting add-ons that are in GPL violations and, so, non GPL protected and, if without a second license, not legally downloadable and usable by Orbiter users. That liability is minimal - just wasting time to taking down the add on if requested, but it's a nuisance to say the least - and a waste of efforts from the developer in developing it and from the maintainers in hosting in the mean time.
A 100% legal safety net is impossible - any half
copyright troll, I mean, attorney can harass O-H maintainers for any
reason his client can afford to pay.
But in my humble opinion, we do not have to make their jobs easier. By standing on the right side, we always can hope to get help.
---------- Post added at 07:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:07 PM ----------
But you have contributed knowing that the code will be linked to Orbiter, so you have de facto accepted a license exception even if one was not explicitly specified
It' my understanding that unlawful clauses or agreements are void - so agreeing implicitly with (unlawful) linking on Orbit will not legitimize it neither nullify the guy's right to complain later.
But your mileage can vary, what I said can be valid in my country and not in yours (and I don't know about USA).
No, unless the add-on in question contains code copyrighted by FSF. Only copyright holder can file copyright claims.
The add-on in question contains FSF copyrighted material, the GNU License itself. By using FSF copyrighted material, you are obliged to fulfill FSF terms, or you will be in Copyright violation on the... Copyright License itself!
(I'm telling you, that guys are geniuses!)