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

[Crista Lopes]

On 11/1/2010 2:58 PM, Karen Palen wrote:
> Is that advice documented somewhere?
>

Whatever the original legal advice was, it resulted in the current rules 
described here:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy

For the past year or so, we have been consulting informally with a 
lawyer based in San Diego who is very much inside the issues. When we 
inquired about relaxing the restrictive rules, including the 6-month 
quarantine, he reinforced the need for those rules.

We don't have a formal engagement with this lawyer yet, because the 
project is not an official organization, and none of us is acting on its 
behalf. So his advice has been informal, including a disclaimer in his 
emails saying "This is not legal advice," and his choosing which 
questions to answer. Hence it's not appropriate to make his emails 
public. People here should feel free to consult with your own lawyers, 
formally or informally, and find out what they say about these issues.

Based on what we heard from him, it looks like all core devs have now 
come to the conclusion that the only route away from the current 
restrictions is to form a non-profit and have that be the umbrella for 
all these legal issues, including engaging with this lawyer officially. 
Once documents can be signed officially, things can potentially become a 
lot cleaner and a lot less restrictive -- the right way.


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