Eric Bohlman wrote:
This is a rather sticky point. It's unlikely that someone who unofficially "disclaimed copyright" would willingly change his mind afterwards, but that assumes ideal circumstances. In the Real World, people sometimes die, get divorced, or get sued by people they owe money to. It seems to me that if someone from a country that doesn't recognize voluntary relinquishment of copyright (and, AFAIK, that's most countries) contributes code to SQLite or something similar, his heirs, ex-spouse, or creditors could end up with a proprietary interest in part of the code. Not good.
I think that maybe everyone is getting their nickers in a bunch over nothing here. It seems a little paranoid to get worried because somebody is giving something away for free. What's somebody going to sue for? Lost earnings because they didn't get their share of royalties for the code their former spouse/ancestor wrote? The code was written with the understanding that it would not generate any revenue.
Copyright on the code has been renounced in the U.S. So somebody in Germany wants to sue Mr. Hipp because he can't renounce it there. That's really great, but German courts have very little ability to act against foreign citizens who are in another country. The same applies to other courts in other countries. You can get all the judgements against a foreign citizen you want in a Russian, Spanish or Chinese court. So long as the citizen stays on their native soil there's blessed little that can be done about collecting on those judgements.
Before somebody chimes in about how it'll be your own company that gets sued for using the code, sit down and relax. Unless you have very deep pockets, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than to be a target of such a suit. There's no point in going after somebody who'll be bankrupted by fighting the case, since there'll be no money to collect. That's the sort of thing that happens to Daimler-Chrysler or IBM, because they can afford to fight the case. If your company is that size, you should be fretting the matter with your lawyers, not a mailing list.
My advice? Stop fretting and get on with using this great little library. There's a lot more profit in that than there is in worrying about the unlikely event of a lawsuit that can't be collected on.
Clay Dowling -- http://www.lazarusid.com/notes/ Lazarus Notes Articles and Commentary on Web Development
