I'm emphatically not a lawyer and I don't speak for our legal team. But:
* Legalese is a specialized language. It's not strictly English, and it's not
always amenable to "common sense" interpretation. Think of lawyers as people
who write code in an underspecified language for a buggy compiler, and you
begin to understand why legalese is the way it is. There's a lot of law that
isn't stated, but is actually implied by the context of the existing settled
law. What that means is that if you're not a lawyer, you probably shouldn't be
attempting to interpret legal documents -- especially not for other people.
Similarly, if you're not a programmer, attempting to interpret program source
code is a risky business. Programmers are especially susceptible to trying to
interpret legal documents using a normal dictionary because they're logical
thinkers. That doesn't always work. If you have legal questions about the
implication of documents, you should ask a lawyer, not a mailing list.
* Similarly, any comment by one of Linden's lawyers in this forum or any other
could possibly be treated as legally binding. That also goes for Linden
employees, especially those with any seniority. So you're unlikely to get
further remarks or "clarifications", except general statements that don't
address specific questions. The policy was revised based on comments on this
list and elsewhere. That's probably a pretty good indication that Linden Lab's
lawyers now think it's clear enough to state its intent and to stand up in
court if they need it to.
Q
On Mar 21, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Carlo Wood wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 05:04:58PM +0100, Tayra Dagostino wrote:
>> maybe we cannot sync.... this isn't a restriction against development
>> based on GPL, is a restriction against ability to connect LL grid with
>> a 3rd party viewer...
>
> No it's not. If that were the case it would say "User", not "Developer".
> Also, I don't read "you will not be able to connect", I read "you will
> be liable for any damages". Quite a different thing.
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