On Mon, 2011-10-24 at 08:01 -0400, Rob Weir wrote:
> > In my experience lawyers don't tend to add pointless
> > distinctions into
>
> In your experience with lawyers, did they ever teach you to
> misquote and/or modify the legal language in order to bolster
> your arguments?
Dearest Rob,
Here is what the JCA says, no-one that goes and looks it up (as they
should, with a real lawyer not a random programmer) will miss this:
1. Contributor owns, and has sufficient rights to contribute,
all source code and related material intended to be compiled or
integrated with the source code for the OpenOffice.org open
source product (the "Contribution") which Contributor has ever
delivered, and Sun has accepted, for incorporation into the
technology made available under the OpenOffice.org open source
project.
It would be hard to hide that.
> In particular, a comma can mark a nonrestrictive clause or a
> parenthetical in this case since "and Sun has accepted" is
> set off by two commas.
It appears (to my simple mind) that your interpretation of Contribution
appears to ignore the presence of everything after
'(the "Contribution")'.
That aside, when this was discussed with Michael Bemmer in the past, he
had the decency to say something similar to:
Whatever it means, if you don't believe it was contributed
or accepted we're not going to take it against your will.
Which is a respectable attitude IMHO.
Of course, in an atmosphere characterised by mutual respect and
collaboration this would be no big deal.
All the best,
Michael.
--
[email protected] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
