The dispute, which was leaked to an Internet message board, offers a rare peek into the dark side of the free software movement--a view that contrasts with the movement's usual public image of happy software proles linking arms and singing the 'Internationale' while freely sharing the fruits of their code-writing labor.

In fact, the Free Software Foundation runs a lot of these 'enforcement actions.' There are 30 to 40 going on right now, and there were 50 last year, Kuhn says. There have been hundreds since 1991, when the current version of the GPL was published, he says. Tracking down bad guys has become such a big operation that the Free Software Foundation has created a so-called Compliance Lab to snoop out violators and bust them. "

Yeah, right! So the free-software community defending its own property, in the way that society allows it to, and that it always announced that it would; rather than, say, rolling over and accepting the corporates can just abuse the contract that they receive Linux under; is ... "dark". And presumably sinister and unsporting too. Pah!

Forbes.com: Linux's Hit Men