[Opensim-dev] Clarification on Licencing and Moving Forward as a Community

Crista Lopes lopes at ics.uci.edu
Mon Nov 1 21:09:58 UTC 2010 

We're not lawyers either. That's why the project has consulted with 
lawyers for this. The rules originally came from IBM legal (if I'm not 
mistaken, although I wasn't here when that happened) and from a lawyer 
based in San Diego who has recently reinforced the need for them, again. 
He explained the options to move beyond them, and that's the advice that 
we are following.

On 11/1/2010 2:02 PM, James Stallings II wrote:
> One thing that always seems to be absent from these discussions is the 
> legal concept of 'estoppel'. Which, as it applies to us here, 
> essentially means that LL has pretty consistently and over the full 
> lifetime of its business demonstrated an intent to form a community of 
> consumers and set the terms for that consumption, and having done so, 
> cannot turn on that community and prosecute for consumption in kind. 
> Read: they've encouraged the growth of this community and continued to 
> support it since the beginning, and cannot now turn on it and 
> prosecute it for existing.
>
> This precedent of law also applies to those who might purchase LL - 
> and while they may be quite disinterested in continuing support of 
> that preexisting community (and are in fact under no obligation to do 
> so), they cannot change the past relationship and cannot pursue legal 
> actions over it, or prevent the continued use of that which has 
> already left the lab on a promotional basis (e.g., the viewer source 
> and the communications protocols). LL have long maintained that they 
> wanted to produce 'the next HTML' for the '3d web'. That, coupled with 
> the open release of the viewer tech and protocols, are a fairly clear 
> presentation of intent.
>
> Just my 0.02$L, and I am not even a lawyer.
>
> Cheers
> James/Hiro
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Cristina Videira Lopes 
> <lopes at ics.uci.edu <mailto:lopes at ics.uci.edu>> wrote:
>
>     We have been discussing these issues internally for a while. The
>     main issue, from an organizational perspective, is that the
>     project is not part of any official organization, and, as such,
>     cannot take signed contributors' agreements that would do away
>     with the strict restrictions that we have in place.
>
>     Note that these restrictions are in place for a very good reason:
>     OpenSim is very close to one company's product, Second Life, and
>     works with their GPL client. However, the license is BSD; we don't
>     want to put people's businesses in danger by risking claims that
>     there is code in here that comes from a GPL project. That's the
>     reason why these very restrictive policies are in place: we're
>     protecting the businesses that are emerging on top of the platform.
>
>     Even though we all believe that Linden Lab would never do anything
>     to harass the OpenSim community, we are more cautious about Linden
>     Lab's next owner, assuming the likely possibility that LL will be
>     acquired. There are a lot of sharks out there...
>
>     So, not withstanding the LGPL issue, which I agree changes things
>     a little bit, the best way out of these restrictions once and for
>     all is for us to form an official non-profit organization. That
>     will allow that organization to receive signed contributors'
>     agreements saying that their contributions are, indeed, original
>     -- even if they have been involved in viewer development. Such
>     agreements move the responsibility to the individual contributors,
>     instead of affecting the project as a whole, as it is now.
>
>     We are moving in that direction.
>
>     Of course, there is nothing preventing groups of people from
>     forming development teams that have less restrictive policies.
>     Risk is in the eye of the beholder...
>
>
>     On Nov 1, 2010, at 12:57 PM, Ai Austin wrote:
>
>         There has been a number of blog posts and descriptions
>         recently of developments of OpenSim that seek to extend and
>         solidify some of the results of the core developments.  This
>         is great.  Diversity and rapid cycles of innovation is what a
>         vibrant development community needs.  But we need to encourage
>         some of the very best results of these efforts do find their
>         way back to core and shared developments that benefit all.
>
>         Reading the blog entries of these developments, it seems that
>         a big issue is our lack of clarity of the policy on excluding
>         those who have also been involved in developments of the
>         viewers under the previously restrictive licence terms, and a
>         clear mechanism for extending OpenSim beyond core modules t0
>         those things essential to make a useful environment.
>
>         A few examples include:
>         http://sanctuary.psmxy.org/2010/10/31/18/introducing-aurora/
>         http://github.com/openmetaversefoundation/fortis-opensim
>         http://www.meta7.com/
>
>         The recent move of the Linden labs viewer licence to Lesser
>         GPL is critical and completely removes the need to be
>         restrictive on that score.  For over 20 years all developments
>         in my group have been Lesser GPL to encourage really
>         widespread and unrestricted take up of the results.
>
>         Can I suggest that
>
>         a) The Dev group now discuss this and immediately declare that
>         the previous restriction on excluding developers who have seen
>         LL viewer source code is removed due to the LGPL licence now
>         in effect.
>
>         b) That we adopt an approach that encourages inputs of
>         elements and usability extensions (via optional modules) that
>         are under LGPL or a suitable Creative Commons Licence.
>
>
>
>
>
>         _______________________________________________
>         Opensim-dev mailing list
>         Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de <mailto:Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de>
>         https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Opensim-dev mailing list
>     Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de <mailto:Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de>
>     https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> ===================================
> http://simhost.com http://osgrid.org
> http://twitter.com/jstallings2
> http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/770/a49
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-dev/attachments/20101101/22288057/attachment-0001.html>

More information about the Opensim-dev mailing list