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On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 8:39 AM Hanno Böck <hanno@g.o> wrote: |
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> |
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> *If* Gentoo decides to go this relicensing way I'd recommend to only do |
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> that if it's coordinated with organizations that have deep legal |
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> knowledge of these issues (e.g. like software freedom conservancy) and |
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> if some lawyers that know this stuff well approve the plan. |
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> |
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IMO no organization has "deep legal knowledge" of these issues, |
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because as far as I'm aware something like this has never been done |
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and tested in court. Really there are only a handful of legal cases |
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at all that deal with copyleft and FOSS relicensing. |
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There is no end of lawyers who will hand-wave on the issue. I think |
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the bottom line is that doing something like this is legally risky, |
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because until something like this has been done successfully many |
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times it is novel. You're never going to find a lawyer who will sign |
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off saying "this is safe and definitely legal." The only way you |
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could make something like this risk-free would be to get governments |
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around the world to pass laws setting up requirements for |
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FOSS-relicensing without the consent of all contributors. |
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The best we can do is mitigate risks, if we elect to do something like |
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this. That can include being transparent, giving notice, having a way |
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to opt out, and so on. Then when somebody sends us a cease and desist |
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notice we just tell them no problem, their contributions will be |
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treated as v2-only. That doesn't completely prevent them from suing |
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us, but it would mitigate the impact, and probably make it unlikely |
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that most would sue in the first place. Really, with something like |
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this that is the best you're ever going to be able to hope for. |
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If you don't want to do something unless a lawyer can guarantee that |
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it can't be found to be a tort by a court, then you definitely don't |
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want to pursue this change, unless we only make it forward-going for |
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new contributions and carefully track existing code, and I doubt that |
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will ever be very practical, so you might as well just give up and say |
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we'll be v2 forever because that's how things were set up 20 years |
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ago. |
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-- |
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Rich |
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