On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccre...@googlemail.com> wrote: > The last time someone from Gentoo spoke to a copyright lawyer, it > resulted in a year-or-so-long ban on recruiting anyone, and everyone > was supposed to sign a piece of paper agreeing to turn over all their > floppy disks and monitors to drobbins upon request.
Hence my comment on risk management. The only way to be safe is to not get anything done. The same is true of avoiding kicking off projects that tick people off - the only way to do that is to effectively not have any more projects (after everybody gives up on the process). I'm sure Gentoo's risk balance can be improved, but the fact is that in this day and age, writing software entails legal risk, just like helping somebody cross the street. If Gentoo were trying to monetize/dual-license/etc then the benefits of airtight copyright assignments would be greater, as would be the benefit of telling anybody in the EU that their help simply isn't needed unless they can convince their parliaments to change their laws. As a community distro, however, we have a different set of priorities. I think the key is to understand the risk that we're taking, and the benefits of changing things. Rich
