<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Nov 1, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Crista Lopes wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
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On 11/1/2010 2:58 PM, Karen Palen wrote:
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Is that advice documented somewhere?<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Whatever the original legal advice was, it resulted in the current
rules described here:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy">http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy</a><br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>From what I understand of GPL the lawyer is being much too over cautious on the GPL viewer part. It isn't so viral that just having studied GPLed code makes one bound to GPL. That would defeat much of the purpose of free software. IANAL but that part is nearly MS level FUD. </div><div><br></div><div>- s</div></body></html>