Re: licensing issues

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Dan Sugalski <[email protected]> wrote:

> People who are going to steal the source will do so regardless of the
> license on the source, and the people who are going to respect the license
> will do so regardless of which it is.

The license has to be sound, clear, and defendable legally---that makes a
difference.   That's why I proposed a dual license (Artistic-2.0|GPL) for
perl6.  The Artistic 2.0 is a rewrite.  We'll see what Larry decides.

> given that it's [GPL] neither been tested in court,

This isn't a valid litmus test for a license.  In fact, there is a very good
reason a well written license won't be tested in court.  Namely, that when a
violation is found, the copyright holders' statement that someone is in
violation is enough.

When violations are encountered and reported to the violator, the first
thing they do is ask their lawyers.  In many cases with the GPL, the lawyers
immediately say: "The copyright holder is right; you are in violation".  It
never needs to go to court, precisely *because* the license is written so
well.

This recently happened with the EveryBuddy program.  In the case of
the Objective-C front-end for GCC, it didn't even get to lawyers.  NeXT
stated their intentions, and the FSF said: "that isn't legal", and NeXT
said: "Well, I guess you are right".

> nor is it particularly well-regarded by a number of the legal folks that
> have looked at it.

As far as I can tell, this is FUD.  Can you produce statements from these
lawyers?  Every lawyer I have ever met things it is legally sound, including
those lawyers who are trying to find ways to violate it!

-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn  -  http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn

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