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On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Ciaran McCreesh |
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<ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com> wrote: |
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> The last time someone from Gentoo spoke to a copyright lawyer, it |
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> resulted in a year-or-so-long ban on recruiting anyone, and everyone |
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> was supposed to sign a piece of paper agreeing to turn over all their |
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> floppy disks and monitors to drobbins upon request. |
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Hence my comment on risk management. The only way to be safe is to |
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not get anything done. The same is true of avoiding kicking off |
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projects that tick people off - the only way to do that is to |
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effectively not have any more projects (after everybody gives up on |
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the process). |
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|
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I'm sure Gentoo's risk balance can be improved, but the fact is that |
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in this day and age, writing software entails legal risk, just like |
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helping somebody cross the street. |
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|
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If Gentoo were trying to monetize/dual-license/etc then the benefits |
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of airtight copyright assignments would be greater, as would be the |
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benefit of telling anybody in the EU that their help simply isn't |
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needed unless they can convince their parliaments to change their |
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laws. As a community distro, however, we have a different set of |
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priorities. |
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|
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I think the key is to understand the risk that we're taking, and the |
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benefits of changing things. |
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|
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Rich |
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