Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

It's doable if you never merge upstream patches in, but even then
you've got quite a mess to clean up. I did the fork thing for a while
and found it was very tricky to clean up, my own from-scratch
simulator (litesim.py) was way way more stable but lagged behind
massively with features.

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Aidan Thornton  wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Gareth Nelson  wrote:
>> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
>> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>
> Yep - people seem to end up writing their own simulator from scratch
> instead as a result. I know that I did[1], and I recall that both you
> and John Hurliman had your own projects too (litesim and Simian
> respectively).
>
> [1] http://www.makomk.com/gitweb/?p=cajeput.git;a=summary
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Aidan Thornton]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Gareth Nelson  wrote:
> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.

Yep - people seem to end up writing their own simulator from scratch
instead as a result. I know that I did[1], and I recall that both you
and John Hurliman had your own projects too (litesim and Simian
respectively).

[1] http://www.makomk.com/gitweb/?p=cajeput.git;a=summary
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Michael Dickson]

Excellent summary by Rob. I was going to write a follow up but Rob's
post was pretty complete.  The short of it is that because of the
contributor agreements LL owns the copyright on all contributions
including their own and can use them pretty much how they see fit,
including in commercial code that may never be released opensource.
They can't remove the GPL from contributions that are accepted into the
opensource tree or on their own GPL'd sources. Those remain available
under the GPL.

You can argue they shouldn't do that but as the article Rob did suggests
software is valued as and deals like MySQL and such depend on the
ability to sell something as IP possibly as a closed source offering.
IMO, its that ability that funds much of the large project opensource
thats done.

Mike

On Sat, 2010-04-03 at 14:12 +, Jesse Barnett wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
> Ok, IANAL as well, but here's what I understood (somewhere in
> the past):
> 
> LL is a single legal entity, "distributing" sources internally
> is
> not considered to be distribution and using binaries on
> multiple
> PC's within the company is also not considered distribution
> (it
> doesn't change owner).
> 
> Therefore, they can link GPL-ed code with non-GPL-ed code (ie
> the server).
> The result would not be something that they can legally
> distribute, but
> that is not being done when they keep it strictly internal.
> 
> If however they would sell (or even give) the server binary to
> another
> company, that is something entirely different. In that case
> they may
> not link with any GPL code, not even GPL shared libraries
> unless that
> binary is GPL-ed, meaning that the receiving company also
> needs to get
> source code, fully GPL-ed, which gives that company the right
> to
> distribute it on the internet as well. If LL wouldd sell that
> binary and
> give the source code but created an NDA for it; then they'd
> break
> the law and could be sued by the copyright holder of the
> GPL-ed part
> of their server (mostly like the FSF).
> 
> 
> 
> Not sure if that assessment is entirely correct. Rob Linden's greatest
> strength (besides his extraordinary patience) was the ability to
> explain things in a way so that anyone could understand. He did an
> excellent blog post last month about dual licensing and contribution
> agreements that should be required reading for everyone:
> 
> http://blog.robla.net/2010/thoughts-on-dual-licensing-and-contrib-agreements/
> 
> Jesse Barnett


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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Jesse Barnett]

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Carlo Wood  wrote:

> Ok, IANAL as well, but here's what I understood (somewhere in the past):
>
> LL is a single legal entity, "distributing" sources internally is
> not considered to be distribution and using binaries on multiple
> PC's within the company is also not considered distribution (it
> doesn't change owner).
>
> Therefore, they can link GPL-ed code with non-GPL-ed code (ie the server).
> The result would not be something that they can legally distribute, but
> that is not being done when they keep it strictly internal.
>
> If however they would sell (or even give) the server binary to another
> company, that is something entirely different. In that case they may
> not link with any GPL code, not even GPL shared libraries unless that
> binary is GPL-ed, meaning that the receiving company also needs to get
> source code, fully GPL-ed, which gives that company the right to
> distribute it on the internet as well. If LL wouldd sell that binary and
> give the source code but created an NDA for it; then they'd break
> the law and could be sued by the copyright holder of the GPL-ed part
> of their server (mostly like the FSF).
>
>
Not sure if that assessment is entirely correct. Rob Linden's greatest
strength (besides his extraordinary patience) was the ability to explain
things in a way so that anyone could understand. He did an excellent blog
post last month about dual licensing and contribution agreements that should
be required reading for everyone:

http://blog.robla.net/2010/thoughts-on-dual-licensing-and-contrib-agreements/

Jesse Barnett
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Carlo Wood]

Ok, IANAL as well, but here's what I understood (somewhere in the past):

LL is a single legal entity, "distributing" sources internally is
not considered to be distribution and using binaries on multiple
PC's within the company is also not considered distribution (it
doesn't change owner).

Therefore, they can link GPL-ed code with non-GPL-ed code (ie the server).
The result would not be something that they can legally distribute, but
that is not being done when they keep it strictly internal.

If however they would sell (or even give) the server binary to another
company, that is something entirely different. In that case they may
not link with any GPL code, not even GPL shared libraries unless that
binary is GPL-ed, meaning that the receiving company also needs to get
source code, fully GPL-ed, which gives that company the right to
distribute it on the internet as well. If LL wouldd sell that binary and
give the source code but created an NDA for it; then they'd break
the law and could be sued by the copyright holder of the GPL-ed part
of their server (mostly like the FSF).

On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 09:53:39AM +0200, Anders Arnholm wrote:
> Sending in that fax and giveing the LL copyright for tha patches. We all 
> knew that LL had an internal code base mixed with the server code 
> containing non-gpl:ed code.

-- 
Carlo Wood 
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Anders Arnholm]

Glen Canaday wrote:
> anyone who is known to have seen the LL server code. They can't be sure 
> there's no LL-proprietary licensing stuff going on. See this: 
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy
>
> ... all of which I can completely understand.
>   
No, the not reading viewer code in 6 mouths makes no sence at all. Makes 
the bug solutions a pain in the ass really. Any sencidle developer with 
two programs talking to each other, trying to solve a problem look at 
both codes. It does not break copyright laws.


> related. I'm actually rather surprised no one's said anything about the 
> merges of GPL code into viewer-internal. That bugged me more than the 
> TPV stuff.
>   

Sending in that fax and giveing the LL copyright for tha patches. We all 
knew that LL had an internal code base mixed with the server code 
containing non-gpl:ed code.


/ Balp

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Ryan McDougall]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 3:44 AM, Kent Quirk (Q Linden)  
wrote:
> 1) The first line of my comment is that I don't speak for Linden legal.

Right.

> 2) What I said was that if you want to understand legalese, you should talk 
> to a lawyer. That's it.

Seriously, how many developers can realistically to do that?

That said, I find the language TPVP itself is pretty clear. The only
confusing part is how you can make it apply to *developers* somehow.

Totally unprecedented; the GPL applies to the source, and the TOS
apply to anyone who connects to SL -- what on earth has LL legal given
birth to here?

FUD own-goal.

>
>        Q

Cheers,

>
>
> On Apr 1, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>
>> An interesting point:
>> If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
>> comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
>> actually consent to agree to it.
>>
>> Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine  
>> wrote:
>>> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
>>> amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
>>> programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV
>>> policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
>>> repeat his words here for clarity:
>>>
>>>
>>>     Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
>>>     Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our
>>> ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could
>>> agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
>>> required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
>>> works in this area?
>>>
>>> The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by
>>> programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
>>> understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
>>> license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2
>>> clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
>>> "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO
>>> WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
>>> liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
>>> conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
>>>
>>> Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
>>> longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and
>>> lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no other
>>> way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)
>>>
>>> That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when they
>>> use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
>>> happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they connect to SL,
>>> and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do something
>>> bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally they
>>> are personally responsible for their actions.
>>>
>>> In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, pe

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Rob Nelson]

I have one for working on Voxel terrain (which will also completely
break compatibility with SL).

Lol, losing power.

On Fri, 2010-04-02 at 10:38 -0500, Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
> 
> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
> 
> > If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
> > contributing patches to opensim
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
> >> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"  
> >> opensim?
> 
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 2010-04-02, at 11:51, Glen Canaday wrote:

>  I'm actually rather surprised no one's said anything about the
> merges of GPL code into viewer-internal. That bugged me more than the
> TPV stuff.

That's why you have to transfer the copyright to LL when you send them  
code, because that way they're not constrained to use the GPL in their  
internal codebase.

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

It can, but only if the fork has enough developers working on it
instead of the original - and that's the trickiest part

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 6:12 PM, Argent Stonecutter
 wrote:
> Starting a fork can light a fire under a parochial developer team. It worked
> for GCC with EGCS.
>
>
> On 2010-04-02, at 10:49, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>
>> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
>> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>>>
>>> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>>
 If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
 contributing patches to opensim

 On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
>
> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
> opensim?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
>> everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
>> Printcrime by Cory Doctrow
>>
>> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>
> "Welcome back, Anonymous, we're glad to see you again!"
>
>
>



-- 
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everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Argent Stonecutter]

Starting a fork can light a fire under a parochial developer team. It  
worked for GCC with EGCS.


On 2010-04-02, at 10:49, Gareth Nelson wrote:

> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
>  wrote:
>> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>>
>> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>
>>> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>>> contributing patches to opensim
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:

 What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
 opensim?
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
> everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
> Printcrime by Cory Doctrow
>
> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

I know the reason they won't accept patches from viewer devs, but it's
a nonsensical reason.
Merely  viewing the viewer source code does not mean any code you
write later on must be GPLed - something which 3 different attorneys
confirmed.

This is something fairly basic in copyright law - it covers expression
in fixed form, not ideas or abstract concepts.

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Glen Canaday  wrote:
> They won't accept viewer developers because the viewer is GPL and they
> want to be absolutely sure that only BSD code gets in. If the viewer
> code weren't virally licensed (as the GPL is), they'd probably be more
> than happy to accept viewer-developer patches. Geeked as all get-out,
> I'd imagine. It's the same reason why they will not accept patches from
> anyone who is known to have seen the LL server code. They can't be sure
> there's no LL-proprietary licensing stuff going on. See this:
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy
>
> ... all of which I can completely understand.
>
> It's a good thing I haven't had time to view the code itself so I'm
> still open to choose a project. Though I *HAVE* decided that I will not
> work on a TPV... it's Snowglobe if it's going to be anything viewer
> related. I'm actually rather surprised no one's said anything about the
> merges of GPL code into viewer-internal. That bugged me more than the
> TPV stuff.
>
> I dunno about mono, though. I'm not too keen on learning yet another
> language. My brain's kinda full as it is and I would LOVE to branch the
> viewer into UI, rendering, network, and DB modules so that any one
> module can be upgraded at any time without any significant impact on any
> other.
>
> --GC
>
> On 04/02/2010 11:49 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
>> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
>>   wrote:
>>
>>> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>>>
>>> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>>
>>>
 If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
 contributing patches to opensim

 On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:

> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
> opensim?
>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Glen Canaday]

They won't accept viewer developers because the viewer is GPL and they 
want to be absolutely sure that only BSD code gets in. If the viewer 
code weren't virally licensed (as the GPL is), they'd probably be more 
than happy to accept viewer-developer patches. Geeked as all get-out, 
I'd imagine. It's the same reason why they will not accept patches from 
anyone who is known to have seen the LL server code. They can't be sure 
there's no LL-proprietary licensing stuff going on. See this: 
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy

... all of which I can completely understand.

It's a good thing I haven't had time to view the code itself so I'm 
still open to choose a project. Though I *HAVE* decided that I will not 
work on a TPV... it's Snowglobe if it's going to be anything viewer 
related. I'm actually rather surprised no one's said anything about the 
merges of GPL code into viewer-internal. That bugged me more than the 
TPV stuff.

I dunno about mono, though. I'm not too keen on learning yet another 
language. My brain's kinda full as it is and I would LOVE to branch the 
viewer into UI, rendering, network, and DB modules so that any one 
module can be upgraded at any time without any significant impact on any 
other.

--GC

On 04/02/2010 11:49 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:
> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
>   wrote:
>
>> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>>
>> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>
>>  
>>> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>>> contributing patches to opensim
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
>>>
 What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
 opensim?
  
>>
>>  
>
>
>

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
 wrote:
> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>
> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>
>> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>> contributing patches to opensim
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
>>>
>>> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
>>> opensim?
>
>



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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Argent Stonecutter]

Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.

On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:

> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
> contributing patches to opensim
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
>> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"  
>> opensim?

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Maya Remblai]

Beats me, honestly. I'm not a coder, I'm just a content creator. My 
guess is the OpenSim project has its own plans and doesn't go looking 
for code elsewhere, they only take what's given to them. Which makes 
sense given the number of grids. But I really don't know the reason, I 
was just pointing out my own experiences.

Maya

Carlo Wood wrote:
> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure" opensim?
>
>   

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[David M Chess]

Dale Mahalko :
...
> Can individuals actually talk directly to Linden's TOS lawyers without
> paying a fee of some sort?

I don't think anyone meant to suggest that people should try to talk 
directly to LL's lawyers; as you say, that's unlikely to be feasible.

The idea, I believe, is that if (say) some TPV developer is worried that 
the TPVP might make them liable for something, they should take it to 
their own lawyer, and say "I'm doing this-and-such, and there's this 
cryptic legalese here that says this-and-this, is this likely to be a 
problem for me?".  And you're right that will generally cost money 
(lawyers hate it when ppl come up to them at parties and ask stuff like 
that expecting a free answer :) ).

I'm personally not fond of the whole "only lawyers should bother reading 
or commenting on legal documents" thing, myself.  It's certainly true that 
if you assume that words in legal documents have just their usual English 
meanings, you'll get the actual meaning wrong pretty often (my favorite 
example being "hold harmless").   But for policies like the TPVP that are 
intended to be read and agreed to by large numbers of customers (unlike, 
say, a one-to-one contract between companies that each have their own 
legal teams), it's really in everyone's interest that the language be both 
legally correct *and* clear to the layman.  It doesn't benefit anyone, 
including the Lab, to have it misunderstood by anyone.
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Dale Mahalko]

I am not a lawyer. I don't know how the whole business model of
lawyers and fees work. This whole "talk to a lawyer" boilerplate
response raises questions related to lawyer fees, that do not appear
to be well known..


Can individuals actually talk directly to Linden's TOS lawyers without
paying a fee of some sort? Probably the huge corporate lawyer being
asked the question wants a fairly sizable fee to provide that answer,
possibly $100 to $1000 per hour.

It is not clear to me what happens when an outside person wants to
talk to a lawyer employed by some company. The lawyer might bill the
questioner for asking the question and bill the company for clarifying
the answer.

What does it cost per minute to call LL's TOS lawyers on the phone and
discuss the issues? Will they even do such an informal form of
communication with a potentially hostile questioner? I suspect a
lawyer would never willingly submit to having such a phone call
recorded, for later transcribing and publishing by the questioner on a
mailing list like this.


I don't know if an individual can even directly talk to a company's
lawyer and get an answer they understand. If lawyers wrote the TOS in
"legalese" then their response to people not employed by the company
might also be in written legalese.

It may be necessary for the questioner to hire their own lawyer ($$)
to write a proper legalese question to be submitted for answering by
the company lawyer (who likely wants to get paid from someone for
answering... the individual, again? The company?) And then your
individual lawyer interprets the corporate legalese response back in
to normal human format, for yet another fee.


This is all conjecture. But it seems possible that if people on this
mailing list want to ask direct questions of LL's TOS lawyers and get
direct answers for this free open source project, the questioners may
need to have some deep pockets and be willing to blow a few thousand
to get those answers.




On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 7:44 PM, Kent Quirk (Q Linden)  
wrote:
> 1) The first line of my comment is that I don't speak for Linden legal.
> 2) What I said was that if you want to understand legalese, you should talk 
> to a lawyer. That's it.
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

You perhaps misunderstood me - I was referring to submitting patches
to opensim. Sadly, unless the current opensim team change their minds,
I do not see tight cooperation between viewer developers and opensim
developers happening, as for efficiency it would be best for people to
be able to contribute to both viewer and sim.

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Jonathan Irvin  wrote:
> Makes sense if you ask me... why submit patches for SnowGlobe when you
> already know other Third-Party viewers work with OpenSim...plus I image
> these guys have enough on their plate as it is getting OpenSim out of alpha.
>
> Jonathan Irvin
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 09:21, Gareth Nelson  wrote:
>>
>> That's one possible reason, other possible reasons are simply lack of
>> willingness to submit the patches
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
>> > That is an 'if', what is the actual reason?
>> >
>> > On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 02:19:31PM +0100, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>> >> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>> >> contributing patches to opensim
>> >
>> > --
>> > Carlo Wood 
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
>> everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
>> Printcrime by Cory Doctrow
>>
>> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
>> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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>



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Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Jonathan Irvin]

Makes sense if you ask me... why submit patches for SnowGlobe when you
already know other Third-Party viewers work with OpenSim...plus I image
these guys have enough on their plate as it is getting OpenSim out of alpha.

Jonathan Irvin


On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 09:21, Gareth Nelson  wrote:

> That's one possible reason, other possible reasons are simply lack of
> willingness to submit the patches
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
> > That is an 'if', what is the actual reason?
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 02:19:31PM +0100, Gareth Nelson wrote:
> >> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
> >> contributing patches to opensim
> >
> > --
> > Carlo Wood 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
> everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
> Printcrime by Cory Doctrow
>
> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
> ___
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

That's one possible reason, other possible reasons are simply lack of
willingness to submit the patches

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
> That is an 'if', what is the actual reason?
>
> On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 02:19:31PM +0100, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>> contributing patches to opensim
>
> --
> Carlo Wood 
>



-- 
“Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
Printcrime by Cory Doctrow

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Carlo Wood]

That is an 'if', what is the actual reason?

On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 02:19:31PM +0100, Gareth Nelson wrote:
> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
> contributing patches to opensim

-- 
Carlo Wood 
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Gareth Nelson]

If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
contributing patches to opensim

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood  wrote:
> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure" opensim?
>
> On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 09:57:13PM -0600, Maya Remblai wrote:
>> That all is true of pure OpenSim, but not necessarily true of
>> OpenSim-compatible grids. ReactionGrid and InWorldz are
>> OpenSim-compatible, meaning they use the same viewers and started
>> with OpenSim code, but they've fixed many of the problems and are
>> working to fix the others. Personally I favor InWorldz, and am now
>> developing my avatars there before SL.
>>
>> Maya
>>
>> Carlo Wood wrote:
>>
>> >I would move to opensim immediately, but:
>> >
>> >1) It crashes non-stop
>> >2) It can TOTALLY not deal with packetloss:
>> >   2a) Avatar textures are extremely often corrupt.
>> >   2b) Attachment won't attach/detach
>> >   2c) I suffer from "rubber banding"
>> >   2d) If I import stuff it literally ends up all over the sim.
>> >3) Many other bugs have been there for years now
>> >   and seem not to be fixed or addressed. For example,
>> >   3a) Try sitting on a prim
>> >   3b) Try standing on a slope
>> >   3c) Try writing a script
>> >   and so on.
>> >
>> >There simply is no alternative :(
>> >
>> >The opensim servers are very VERY buggy and bad quality,
>> >so much so that I seriously doubt the competence of it's
>> >developers to every deliver anything usable.
>> >
>> >What we need is to start over, write a new server from
>> >the ground up (in C++ if I'm to participate).
>> >
>>
>
> --
> Carlo Wood 
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-- 
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everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.” -
Printcrime by Cory Doctrow

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Carlo Wood]

What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure" opensim?

On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 09:57:13PM -0600, Maya Remblai wrote:
> That all is true of pure OpenSim, but not necessarily true of
> OpenSim-compatible grids. ReactionGrid and InWorldz are
> OpenSim-compatible, meaning they use the same viewers and started
> with OpenSim code, but they've fixed many of the problems and are
> working to fix the others. Personally I favor InWorldz, and am now
> developing my avatars there before SL.
> 
> Maya
> 
> Carlo Wood wrote:
> 
> >I would move to opensim immediately, but:
> >
> >1) It crashes non-stop
> >2) It can TOTALLY not deal with packetloss:
> >   2a) Avatar textures are extremely often corrupt.
> >   2b) Attachment won't attach/detach
> >   2c) I suffer from "rubber banding"
> >   2d) If I import stuff it literally ends up all over the sim.
> >3) Many other bugs have been there for years now
> >   and seem not to be fixed or addressed. For example,
> >   3a) Try sitting on a prim
> >   3b) Try standing on a slope
> >   3c) Try writing a script
> >   and so on.
> >
> >There simply is no alternative :(
> >
> >The opensim servers are very VERY buggy and bad quality,
> >so much so that I seriously doubt the competence of it's
> >developers to every deliver anything usable.
> >
> >What we need is to start over, write a new server from
> >the ground up (in C++ if I'm to participate).
> >
> 

-- 
Carlo Wood 
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Gareth Nelson]

Of course, the simple way to not be held liable for flaws in TPVs is
to say to users "we do not support any viewer not developed by us, and
you accept all liability for your use of any unsupported viewers". I
don't think anyone is asking LL to accept liability for bugs in third
party viewers, or asking for LL to tolerate obvious abuse such as sim
crashers - but none of us here has perfect coding skills, so all of
our code WILL be buggy at times. I've said before that personally, i'd
only ever offer a warranty on my code if I was paid for it - offering
a warranty on something infinitely reproducible is infinite liability
otherwise.. and LL are surprised by third party devs not
wanting to accept infinite liability?

The other thing they could do is produce a set of guidelines for
developers, which must be complied with to be listed in the directory,
and a warning to users that if a TPV developer is not willing to
comply to these guidelines, then the viewer may cause trouble for
anyone who use it. Removing the requirement to list RL contact details
would also make more developers willing to list themselves in the
directory - as it is, I can picture very very few residents are going
to be naive enough to think "if it's not in the directory, it's not
good".

Q - You are correct that you don't speak for legal, but surely you can
see how any member of staff at LL (whether that be yourself, one of
the legal team or even M) saying that we should not try to interpret
the policies your company would like to hold us to could cause
problems in enforcing those policies. As it is, I personally find
legalese relating to copyright ,TOS and software licensing matters
fairly simple to understand and often have had actual lawyers
confirming my understanding as correct, and I find the TPV policy
rather simple to understand. I have not yet taken the document to a
lawyer to review though, as i'm not willing to pay just to get a "yes,
you were right - it'd make you liable" and I would not want to bog
down the few pro-bono attorneys i'm aware of with this rather
pointless work either (even if they would be willing to accept it).



On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Tammy Nowotny  wrote:
> Well, a truly incomprehensible contract WOULD be unenforceable, just like an
> incomprehensible law.  The new TOS agreement, however, is not
> incomprehensible.  It's just plain complicated.
>
> The Lindens are obviously trying to walk a fine line between allowing 3rd
> Party Viewers and not being legally responsible for them.  Anyone who is
> shocked by that is either naive or obtuse--- or both.
>
> --Tammy Nowotny
>
> Kent Quirk (Q Linden) wrote:
>
> 1) The first line of my comment is that I don't speak for Linden legal.
> 2) What I said was that if you want to understand legalese, you should talk
> to a lawyer. That's it.
>
>   Q
>
>
> On Apr 1, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>
>
>
> An interesting point:
> If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
> comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
> actually consent to agree to it.
>
> Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case
>
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine 
> wrote:
>
>
> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
> amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
> programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV
> policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
> repeat his words here for clarity:
>
>
> Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
> Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
>
> 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
> addres

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Michael Dickson]

You just enjoy making friends all over the map don't you?

Mike

On Fri, 2010-04-02 at 02:34 +, Carlo Wood wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 11:06:59PM +0800, Boy Lane wrote:
> > What are you still doing here?
> 
> I would move to opensim immediately, but:
> 
> 1) It crashes non-stop
> 2) It can TOTALLY not deal with packetloss:
>2a) Avatar textures are extremely often corrupt.
>2b) Attachment won't attach/detach
>2c) I suffer from "rubber banding"
>2d) If I import stuff it literally ends up all over the sim.
> 3) Many other bugs have been there for years now
>and seem not to be fixed or addressed. For example,
>3a) Try sitting on a prim
>3b) Try standing on a slope
>3c) Try writing a script
>and so on.
> 
> There simply is no alternative :(
> 
> The opensim servers are very VERY buggy and bad quality,
> so much so that I seriously doubt the competence of it's
> developers to every deliver anything usable.
> 
> What we need is to start over, write a new server from
> the ground up (in C++ if I'm to participate).
> 


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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Tammy Nowotny]

Well, a truly incomprehensible contract WOULD be unenforceable, just 
like an incomprehensible law.  The new TOS agreement, however, is not 
incomprehensible.  It's just plain complicated.


The Lindens are obviously trying to walk a fine line between allowing 
3rd Party Viewers and not being legally responsible for them.  Anyone 
who is shocked by that is either naive or obtuse--- or both.


--Tammy Nowotny

Kent Quirk (Q Linden) wrote:

1) The first line of my comment is that I don't speak for Linden legal.
2) What I said was that if you want to understand legalese, you should talk to 
a lawyer. That's it.

Q


On Apr 1, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:

  

An interesting point:
If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
actually consent to agree to it.

Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine  wrote:


On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV
policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
repeat his words here for clarity:


Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010

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


I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our
ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could
agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
works in this area?

The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by
programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2
clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
"further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO
WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).

Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and
lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no other
way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)

That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when they
use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they connect to SL,
and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do something
bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally they
are personally responsible for their actions.

In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this is the
best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to incomprehensible
conditions is not something that any sensible person should consider.


Morgaine.



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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Maya Remblai]

That all is true of pure OpenSim, but not necessarily true of 
OpenSim-compatible grids. ReactionGrid and InWorldz are 
OpenSim-compatible, meaning they use the same viewers and started with 
OpenSim code, but they've fixed many of the problems and are working to 
fix the others. Personally I favor InWorldz, and am now developing my 
avatars there before SL.

Maya

Carlo Wood wrote:

> I would move to opensim immediately, but:
>
> 1) It crashes non-stop
> 2) It can TOTALLY not deal with packetloss:
>2a) Avatar textures are extremely often corrupt.
>2b) Attachment won't attach/detach
>2c) I suffer from "rubber banding"
>2d) If I import stuff it literally ends up all over the sim.
> 3) Many other bugs have been there for years now
>and seem not to be fixed or addressed. For example,
>3a) Try sitting on a prim
>3b) Try standing on a slope
>3c) Try writing a script
>and so on.
>
> There simply is no alternative :(
>
> The opensim servers are very VERY buggy and bad quality,
> so much so that I seriously doubt the competence of it's
> developers to every deliver anything usable.
>
> What we need is to start over, write a new server from
> the ground up (in C++ if I'm to participate).
>
>   

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Carlo Wood]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 11:06:59PM +0800, Boy Lane wrote:
> What are you still doing here?

I would move to opensim immediately, but:

1) It crashes non-stop
2) It can TOTALLY not deal with packetloss:
   2a) Avatar textures are extremely often corrupt.
   2b) Attachment won't attach/detach
   2c) I suffer from "rubber banding"
   2d) If I import stuff it literally ends up all over the sim.
3) Many other bugs have been there for years now
   and seem not to be fixed or addressed. For example,
   3a) Try sitting on a prim
   3b) Try standing on a slope
   3c) Try writing a script
   and so on.

There simply is no alternative :(

The opensim servers are very VERY buggy and bad quality,
so much so that I seriously doubt the competence of it's
developers to every deliver anything usable.

What we need is to start over, write a new server from
the ground up (in C++ if I'm to participate).

-- 
Carlo Wood 
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Darmath]

Being the one who made the comments I'll go on record to express my 
disagreement with the views here. I'm not going to elaborate why. I'm 
sure people would rather concentrate on technial matters rather than 
legal matters on this list. Anyone that wants to have a legal discussion 
with me is free to email me. Otherwise i'm going back to lurking on this 
list, trying to learn about software development issues.


On 2/04/2010 10:33 AM, Rob Nelson wrote:

Okay, I'm going to try this one last time.

When users sign into SL for the first time, they are asked to read and
agree to the Terms of Service agreement.  Included in the ToS is the
Community Standards and now the TPV.  *ALL OF THESE DOCUMENTS ARE
SUPPOSED TO BE READ AND AGREED TO BY THE END USER.*

Saying something like "Well, you're not a lawyer, so how are you
supposed to know what it REALLY means?" is disregarding the fact that
users, NOT LAWYERS, are supposed to understand these documents.  _IF WE
CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOUR DOCUMENTS, WE CANNOT AGREE TO THEM._  No one is
going to be rich enough enough to be able hire a lawyer to translate a
document prior to playing a bloody MMORPG, especially a lawyer who
specializes in copyright law.

Someone commented earlier that the GPL was written in a way that
programmers could understand.  Guess why?  BECAUSE PROGRAMMERS READ THE
GPL AS IT'S AT THE TOP OF EVERY SOURCE-CODE FILE AND IS USUALLY
DISPLAYED ON PROGRAM STARTUP.  End-users typically do not NEED to read
the GPL unless they're interested in distributing or modifying the
sourcecode.

Since the TPV DOES apply to programmers, distributors, and end-users, IT
MUST BE WRITTEN IN A WAY THAT THEY CAN UNDERSTAND.  If I were to make a
ToS written in Chinese and present it to English-speaking users, how are
the users expected to agree to it?

tl;dr the ToS, TPV, and CS are all rules to be read, understood, and
followed by the end user.  You cannot expect us to go out and hire a
lawyer every time we want to play a new game or develop for an
open-source project.

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Kent Quirk (Q Linden)]

1) The first line of my comment is that I don't speak for Linden legal.
2) What I said was that if you want to understand legalese, you should talk to 
a lawyer. That's it.

Q


On Apr 1, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:

> An interesting point:
> If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
> comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
> actually consent to agree to it.
> 
> Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case
> 
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine  
> wrote:
>> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
>> amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
>> programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV
>> policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
>> repeat his words here for clarity:
>> 
>> 
>> Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
>> Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>> I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our
>> ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could
>> agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
>> required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
>> works in this area?
>> 
>> The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by
>> programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
>> understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
>> license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2
>> clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
>> "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO
>> WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
>> liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
>> conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
>> 
>> Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
>> longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and
>> lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no other
>> way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)
>> 
>> That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when they
>> use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
>> happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they connect to SL,
>> and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do something
>> bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally they
>> are personally responsible for their actions.
>> 
>> In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this is the
>> best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to incomprehensible
>> conditions is not something that any sensible person should consider.
>> 
>> 
>> Morgaine.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> Policies and (un)subscribe information available here:
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>> Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting
>> privileges
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One f

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Rob Nelson]

Okay, I'm going to try this one last time.

When users sign into SL for the first time, they are asked to read and
agree to the Terms of Service agreement.  Included in the ToS is the
Community Standards and now the TPV.  *ALL OF THESE DOCUMENTS ARE
SUPPOSED TO BE READ AND AGREED TO BY THE END USER.*  

Saying something like "Well, you're not a lawyer, so how are you
supposed to know what it REALLY means?" is disregarding the fact that
users, NOT LAWYERS, are supposed to understand these documents.  _IF WE
CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOUR DOCUMENTS, WE CANNOT AGREE TO THEM._  No one is
going to be rich enough enough to be able hire a lawyer to translate a
document prior to playing a bloody MMORPG, especially a lawyer who
specializes in copyright law.

Someone commented earlier that the GPL was written in a way that
programmers could understand.  Guess why?  BECAUSE PROGRAMMERS READ THE
GPL AS IT'S AT THE TOP OF EVERY SOURCE-CODE FILE AND IS USUALLY
DISPLAYED ON PROGRAM STARTUP.  End-users typically do not NEED to read
the GPL unless they're interested in distributing or modifying the
sourcecode.

Since the TPV DOES apply to programmers, distributors, and end-users, IT
MUST BE WRITTEN IN A WAY THAT THEY CAN UNDERSTAND.  If I were to make a
ToS written in Chinese and present it to English-speaking users, how are
the users expected to agree to it? 

tl;dr the ToS, TPV, and CS are all rules to be read, understood, and
followed by the end user.  You cannot expect us to go out and hire a
lawyer every time we want to play a new game or develop for an
open-source project.

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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Anders Arnholm]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Boy Lane skrev 2010-04-01 17.06:

> And now Viewer 2.0 is the new holy grail. I really thought the 1.23 release 
> was bad. But now 2.0 even goes
> against a major part of the resident population, handicapped people; 
> particular people with epilepsy/seizure disorders
> (VWR-17249 - Viewer 2.0 is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities 
> Act).
> http://jira.secondli

If TPV banned from using as examples in the pJIRA now?

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17249?focusedCommentId=178880&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#action_178880
 Alexa Linden added a comment - 30/Mar/10 11:44 AM - edited
 Please be aware, Linking to 3rd party viewers is not appropriate for
Pjira. Comments doing so will be deleted.
 Thank you

Some time the dooomsday telling this is all to kille the open source tpv
feels like more and more true.

/ Balp
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.12 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

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w1cAn074k6mPAN99UXzomxjeX4V9RvTS
=cJ/E
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

[Boy Lane]

Clearly NO.

Honestly, I don't know why this matters anymore. Everything was said. Linden 
made it clear they'll stick to their
TPV "guns".

Four viewer projects announced they discontinue support for SL, that is 
Imprudence, RealXtend, Luna and Rainbow.

Some other people still hang on but probably not for long. That's leaving 
only two graphical 3rd party viewer
projects around, both with a shady gray past in terms of intentional 
producing malicious clients or violating
software licenses. I see a great future ahead...

And now Viewer 2.0 is the new holy grail. I really thought the 1.23 release 
was bad. But now 2.0 even goes
against a major part of the resident population, handicapped people; 
particular people with epilepsy/seizure disorders
(VWR-17249 - Viewer 2.0 is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities 
Act).
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17249

What are you still doing here?

Boy


> Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:42:24 +0100
> From: Morgaine 
> Subject: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible
> conditions?
> To: opensource-dev@lists.secondlife.com
> Message-ID:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to
> us<https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/opensource-dev/2010-March/001195.html>that
> legalese is not a language amenable to "common sense" interpretation,
> and more specifically, that programmers like ourselves should not expect 
> to
> understand this Linden TPV policy document using our normal logic and our
> normal dictionary.  I'll repeat his words here for clarity:
>
>
> *Kent Quirk (Q Linden)* q at lindenlab.com
> 
>*Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010*
>
>
>   - 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
>
>
>
> I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to 
> our
> ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person 
> could
> agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
> required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
> works in this area?
>
> The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood 
> by
> programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
> understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
> license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that 
> GPLv2
> clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
> "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the 
> "NO
> WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
> liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
> conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
>
> Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
> longer matte

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Dirk Moerenhout]

Maybe you should ponder awhile about what "responsible" actually
implies within this context. You seem to think you're not responsible
for code you develop or distribute thanks to the GPL. Let us travel
back a bit in time to when the US thought that they should control
cryptography related software. Do you really believe that US citizens
would've been guaranteed safety from prosecution if they openly
exported GPL'd cryptographic software?

The GPL clearly includes "TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW"
if you wonder in how far Sections 11 and 12 can help you out. That
part of the GPL basically should help you understand that distributing
software is a risk unless you know _ALL_ applicable law. For US
citizens for example patent law comes to mind as being quite a burden.

I still need to see somebody who can give a sensible example of where
their legal rights diminish upto a point where frivolous law suits are
suddenly possible thanks to the TPVP.

Dirk



On 1 April 2010 10:54, Rob Nelson  wrote:
> How many times must it be said?
>
> The problem isn't that there's people interpreting it.  The problem is
> that there's NO ROOM FOR INTERPRETATION.
>
> Section 7a:
>
>> If you are a Developer, you are responsible for all features,
> functionality, code, and content of Third-Party Viewers that you develop
> or distribute.
>
> I honestly am not going to believe a Linden who's handwaving what is an
> OBVIOUS and CLEAR statement simply because we're not lawyers.  I mean,
> honestly.  What is a lawyer going to say?  "Oh, by that, they actually
> mean you are NOT responsible"?  I HIGHLY doubt that.
>
>
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Jonathan Irvin]

Keep in mind, most of this "legalese" that they have is just to cover their
own asses.  Many MANY companies do stuff like this just in case that if
something ever escalates to a point where those words come to play in court,
they have all their P's and Q's.

Linden Labs is a company, folks...a company that has a budget, a
bottom-line, and most of all liable assets in which they need to protect in
order to keep themselves afloat and give us all something to rant about (
I'm just kidding :P ).

An age-old question comes to mind...

"How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Answer One, Zero, we don't have the source code for it.
Answer Two, Zero, it's a hardware issue.

Jonathan Irvin


On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 03:54, Gareth Nelson  wrote:

> An interesting point:
> If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
> comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
> actually consent to agree to it.
>
> Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case
>
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine 
> wrote:
> > On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
> > amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
> > programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden
> TPV
> > policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
> > repeat his words here for clarity:
> >
> >
> > Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
> > Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to
> our
> > ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person
> could
> > agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
> > required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
> > works in this area?
> >
> > The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood
> by
> > programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
> > understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
> > license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that
> GPLv2
> > clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
> > "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the
> "NO
> > WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
> > liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
> > conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
> >
> > Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
> > longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms
> and
> > lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no
> other
> > way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)
> >
> > That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when
> they
> > use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
> > happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they connect to
> SL,
> > and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do
> something
> > bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally
> they
> > are personally

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Darmath]

On 1/04/2010 7:42 PM, Morgaine wrote:
On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us 
 
that legalese is not a language amenable to "common sense" 
interpretation, and more specifically, that programmers like ourselves 
should not expect to understand this Linden TPV policy document using 
our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll repeat his words 
here for clarity:


You can quote Q's words all you like Morgaine but don't twist their 
meaning so that you can continually flog your erroneous dead horse.  
That said let's actually look at what he said shall we?


*Kent Quirk (Q Linden)* q at lindenlab.com 


/Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010/

* 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.

It is quite simple what Q meant. What he simply meant, and quite rightly 
was justified in pointing out, was that you can't take a written legal 
document and an ordinary dictionary and ascertain the meaning and more 
importantly the legal effect of a legal document using a dictionary 
alone. Especially if you think you're going to anticipate what a court 
may or may not do on the basis of that document. Q was seeking to stress 
that law like every other subject area, known to mankind, has its own 
particular language in which people, judges, lawyers and the 
legislators, communicate. Computer scientists are no exception. Nor are 
lawyers. Words that are used by lawyers, judges and legislators may or 
may not have acquired a technial meaning within legal contexts, within a 
jurisdiction, and where it has acquired such a meaning it may in a 
particular context be given that meaning. Hell even within the law there 
are words that in one legal context may mean one thing and in another 
legal context mean another thing altogether.


Q, so far as United States of America, England, perhaps more widely to 
be stated as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and countless 
other jurisdictions have "unwritten" or "unstated" law as you damn well 
know. That courts in deciding disputes in these jurisdictions, depending 
upon your view, "find" or "propound" legal principle to resolve the 
dispute. It's also fundamentally flawed to think that lawyers and judges 
do not employ logical reasoning in the process of resolving disputes. 
They use not only inductive reasoning skills but deductive reasoning 
skills both of which are forms of logical reasoning. Inductive reasoning 
skills are used in common law jurisdictions to ascertain the legal 
principles that are contained in the judgements of judges which 
constitute the law. Deductive reasoning skills are used in the 
application of legal principles to the factual resolution of cases.


But, and this is where Q was damn right to say what he said, the only 
way in which you can actually determine the legal effect of the document 
is with a comprehensive understanding of legal principles, including 
those to be found in legislation, and especially in common law 
jurisdictions, those found by the courts. Attempts to try and ascertain 
the legal effect of legal documents without that knowledge are fraught 
with danger and they lead to huge misunderstandings and miscomprehension.



* 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.

The above view is something I agree with with one exception. The 
exception relates to the notion of programmers being "logical thinkers" 
and the apparent suggestion that lawyers aren't. I haven't heard 
anything so absurd in my life really. There is a difference between 
something being logical and something according to what we actually 
like. I challenge anyone to read a written legal judgement of a superior 
court in any jurisdiction to find an opinion where the judges, when they 
actually wrote their own decision on t

Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Gareth Nelson]

An interesting point:
If a member of staff at LL is basically saying "none of you can
comprehend this policy", then that surely means none of us can
actually consent to agree to it.

Q - you may have just provided some "fuel" for use in any future court case

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Morgaine  wrote:
> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a language
> amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more specifically, that
> programmers like ourselves should not expect to understand this Linden TPV
> policy document using our normal logic and our normal dictionary.  I'll
> repeat his words here for clarity:
>
>
>     Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com
>     Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
>
> 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
>
>
> I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our
> ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could
> agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
> required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
> works in this area?
>
> The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by
> programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
> understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
> license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2
> clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
> "further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO
> WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
> liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
> conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
>
> Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
> longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and
> lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no other
> way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)
>
> That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when they
> use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
> happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they connect to SL,
> and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do something
> bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then naturally they
> are personally responsible for their actions.
>
> In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this is the
> best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to incomprehensible
> conditions is not something that any sensible person should consider.
>
>
> Morgaine.
>
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Re: [opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Rob Nelson]

How many times must it be said?

The problem isn't that there's people interpreting it.  The problem is
that there's NO ROOM FOR INTERPRETATION.

Section 7a:

> If you are a Developer, you are responsible for all features,
functionality, code, and content of Third-Party Viewers that you develop
or distribute.

I honestly am not going to believe a Linden who's handwaving what is an
OBVIOUS and CLEAR statement simply because we're not lawyers.  I mean,
honestly.  What is a lawyer going to say?  "Oh, by that, they actually
mean you are NOT responsible"?  I HIGHLY doubt that.


On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 09:42 +0100, Morgaine wrote:
> On 21st March, Q Linden explained to us that legalese is not a
> language amenable to "common sense" interpretation, and more
> specifically, that programmers like ourselves should not expect to
> understand this Linden TPV policy document using our normal logic and
> our normal dictionary.  I'll repeat his words here for clarity:
> 
> 
> Kent Quirk (Q Linden) q at lindenlab.com 
> Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010
> 
>   * 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
> 
> 
> I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship
> to our ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational
> person could agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it
> even legal to be required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does
> anyone know how the law works in this area?
> 
> The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be
> understood by programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority
> of people here understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are
> issuing a valid GPL license, perhaps one might accept that at face
> value, and assume that GPLv2 clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and
> valid.  Therefore there are no "further restrictions" imposed on SL
> TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO WARRANTY" clause (11-12)
> continues to protect developers from downstream liability, and no
> "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the conditions of this
> License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).
> 
> Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then
> no longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and
> freedoms and lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.
> (It could be no other way anyway, since we are told that we cannot
> understand the TPV.)
> 
> That leaves only the matter of users of TPVs behaving responsibly when
> they use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this
> list is happy to agree.  (Note that developers become users when they
> connect to SL, and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When
> users do something bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden
> client, then naturally they are personally responsible for their
> actions.
> 
> In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this
> is the best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to
> incomprehensible conditions is not something that any sensible person
> should consider.
> 
> 
> Morgaine.
> 
> 
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[opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions?

[Morgaine]

On 21st March, Q Linden explained to
usthat
legalese is not a language amenable to "common sense" interpretation,
and more specifically, that programmers like ourselves should not expect to
understand this Linden TPV policy document using our normal logic and our
normal dictionary.  I'll repeat his words here for clarity:


*Kent Quirk (Q Linden)* q at lindenlab.com

*Sun Mar 21 10:24:13 PDT 2010*


   - 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



I've been thinking about this extraordinary post and its relationship to our
ongoing saga about the TPV, and I fail to see how any rational person could
agree to something unknown, except under duress.  Is it even legal to be
required to agree to the incomprehensible?  Does anyone know how the law
works in this area?

The GPL license was written by FSF lawyers specifically to be understood by
programmers, so it's no surprise that the large majority of people here
understand it. Given that Lindens claim that they are issuing a valid GPL
license, perhaps one might accept that at face value, and assume that GPLv2
clauses 6, 7, 11 and 12 remain intact and valid.  Therefore there are no
"further restrictions" imposed on SL TPV developers (clause 6), and the "NO
WARRANTY" clause (11-12) continues to protect developers from downstream
liability, and no "conditions are imposed on you that contradict the
conditions of this License" thus making the license valid (clause 7).

Given the forgoing, the officially incomprehensible TPV document then no
longer matters to SL TPV developers, because their rights and freedoms and
lack of liability are determined entirely by the GPL.  (It could be no other
way anyway, since we are told that we cannot understand the TPV.)

That leaves only the matter of *users* of TPVs behaving responsibly when
they use TPV clients in SL, with which I'm sure every person on this list is
happy to agree.  (Note that developers become *users* when they connect to
SL, and are bound by the same requirements as users.)  When users do
something bad with a TPV client, or indeed with a Linden client, then
naturally they are personally responsible for their actions.

In the absence of a TPV document that we can comprehend, perhaps this is the
best that TPV developers can do, since agreeing to incomprehensible
conditions is not something that any sensible person should consider.


Morgaine.
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