trademarked logos and GPL

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

Matt,

I think the point was to say that some posts were not making a distinction
between saying "that license is not legally enforceable in any court in the
U.S." and "some of the terms of that license are not consistent with open
source principles;" the latter is fine, the former should be avoided. The
programmers have much more to add to the discussion than the lawyers, in my
opinion. It's the programmers who present the clever hypothetical and the
real-life  programming situations that make the discussions interesting. I
do hope you stay.

Rod

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew C. Weigel" <weigel+ at pitt.edu>
To: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Cc: "Lawrence E. Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: trademarked logos and GPL


> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Rodent of Unusual Size wrote:
>
> > > I want to discourage license-discuss participants from answering
> > > questions like this one.
> > :
> > > But non-lawyers have to avoid giving legal advice
> >
> > Sorry, but this really rubs me the wrong way.  In a word, BS.
>
> I agree.  If "non-lawyers have to avoid giving legal advice" is the
> rule here, I guess we can all pack up and go home.  We're talking about
> software licenses, and whether or not they fit the OSD.  Given that
> we must consider whether or not the license, as is legally enforcable,
> conforms to the guidelines of the OSD, we must discuss legal issues.
> We may even say things that sound like legal advice, like "the text of
> that license leaves holes people could use to set up their own
> closed-source derivative product."
>
> Liability is not an issue; this is a list largely composed of software
> developers, not lawyers, and people shouldn't confuse the two.  On a
> list of this nature, I refuse to accept it as a burden on *my*
> shoulders to avoid statements that people might use as legal advice.
> --
>  Matthew Weigel
>  Research Systems Programmer
>  weigel+ at pitt.edu
>
>