On 21.12.2004, at 21:15, robert burrell donkin wrote:
by this time next year, software patent violations are most likely to be enforceable by criminal sanction. any company wanted to maliciously damage an open source project would only have to target individual european release managers using the most pliant european legal system (UK law, for example). i don't see any way in which the ASF could act to help release managers faced with the criminal law in europe and (against this particular patent threat) neither the GPL nor the ASL could offer any protection at all. IMO the chilling effect of only one open source release manager facing a long prison sentence together with total sequestration of assets would be tremendous.
...yeah, we already got our prisoner suits... :)
http://www.schlitt.info/applications/gallery/linuxtag_2004_day1/abn http://www.schlitt.info/applications/gallery/linuxtag_2004_day2/abr http://www.schlitt.info/applications/gallery/linuxtag_2004_day2/acw
Cheers, Erik
Honestly, isn't the release manager protected in some way? Distributions are basically released by the ASF (as a legal entity) not the release manager himself and furthermore the PMC has to vote on a release; the RM is only the one doing the gruntwork, so I'd guess we're fine here. This doesn't apply to any other private or OSS engagements of course...
happy christmas, one and all!
- robert
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