[Opensim-dev] Clarification on Licencing and Moving Forward as a Community
Karen Palen
karenpalensl at gmail.com
Mon Nov 1 21:58:08 UTC 2010
Is that advice documented somewhere?
If nothing else it should help any new lawyers figure out the
circumstances and what law applies.
On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 14:09 -0700, Crista Lopes wrote:
> 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> 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
> > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ===================================
> > http://simhost.com http://osgrid.org
> > http://twitter.com/jstallings2
> > http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/770/a49
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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