>...[snip]... >... Van Lindberg points >out implicit licenses are not legally binding and presents a legal >horror story of one guy "contributing" code he do not own to an OS >sourceforge project, only to be bankrupted by lawsuits and SF >being required to remove his code. >...[snip]... >
I'm working my way through the same book. I'm afraid there is no defense against any lawsuit brought against an open source project. The cost to defend against a lawsuit implies that the any unfunded open source project immediately loses. It is a classic case of justice being blind (to financial imbalance). Of course, most lawyers will tell you that you only embark on a lawsuit in order to gain money. "On principle" lawsuits, that is, not for financial gain but to prove a point, assume that you're willing to risk a huge loss against a balance of "I was right". If you have that much money to burn then the lawyer's fee will be quite a bit higher. :-) The person bringing the lawsuit has to have "standing", or legal interest. So that is either (A) the contributor of the patch or (B) the original owner of the code. Somehow it seems unlikely that a person contributing a patch (case A) would bring, or could win, a lawsuit if they posted the patch to the open source project mailing list. (Never say never, however.) If the original owner of the code complained (case B) then I would think that an open source project would abide by the "notice and takedown" provision of the DMCA. Given this provision, I'm certain that any open source project would "do the right thing", back out the patch, and rewrite it. Thus, I think the DMCA would cover this case. The "notice and takedown" provision would seem to provide a safe harbor. Standard industry practice on half a million open source projects does not include an "I have signed over my copyright on this particular patch" button. A general copyright judgement making the current practice illegal would wipe out the free software movement overnight (except for the FSF work, but they have paid lawyers). Also note that Sage is not covered by the "safe harbor" provisions of the copyright law. The safe harbor provisions allow the use of copyrighted material for educational, research, and scientific use. But the stated goal of the Sage project is to compete with the commercial software and does not qualify. Tim Daly (not a lawyer) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
