[License-discuss] License compatibility - reg

[Lawrence Rosen]

Luis Villa asked:
> Are you suggesting OSI should give legal advice, Larry? :)

I asked the question that way only to see if you are actually paying
attention here.

Members of this OSI list frequently give advice, although they preface it
with IANAL or "please don't listen to me." When it comes to the GPL, that
advice is sometimes wrong. Especially when they advise us to pay attention
to certain legal opinions of the Free Software Foundation about copyright
law. :-)

> Obviously this is a fact-specific issue, though; consult with your own
lawyer. :)

I already have. I will again.

/Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: Luis Villa [mailto:luis at lu.is] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 5:43 PM
To: License Discuss
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] License compatibility - reg

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>
>> And who does OSI suggest that any of us listen to on an important 
>> FOSS combination/project like this one?

Are you suggesting OSI should give legal advice, Larry? :)

The advice I have given clients in the past is to listen to the copyright
holders. However, in cases where there is a large diversity of copyright
holders for some reason (e.g., Linux kernel, many major web rendering
engines), or where the exact set of copyright holders is not known (e.g.,
you're setting organization-wide policy for an unknown set of future
projects) then treat the license author as a proxy for the views of the
copyright holders, as some fraction of the copyright holders will likely
follow the interpretation of the license authors. Obviously this is a
fact-specific issue, though; consult with your own lawyer. :)

Luis
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