[opensource-dev] Can you legally agree to incomprehensible conditions

Gareth Nelson gareth at garethnelson.com
Fri Apr 2 10:09:32 PDT 2010


I know the reason they won't accept patches from viewer devs, but it's
a nonsensical reason.
Merely  viewing the viewer source code does not mean any code you
write later on must be GPLed - something which 3 different attorneys
confirmed.

This is something fairly basic in copyright law - it covers expression
in fixed form, not ideas or abstract concepts.

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Glen Canaday <gcanaday at gmail.com> wrote:
> They won't accept viewer developers because the viewer is GPL and they
> want to be absolutely sure that only BSD code gets in. If the viewer
> code weren't virally licensed (as the GPL is), they'd probably be more
> than happy to accept viewer-developer patches. Geeked as all get-out,
> I'd imagine. It's the same reason why they will not accept patches from
> anyone who is known to have seen the LL server code. They can't be sure
> there's no LL-proprietary licensing stuff going on. See this:
> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy
>
> ... all of which I can completely understand.
>
> It's a good thing I haven't had time to view the code itself so I'm
> still open to choose a project. Though I *HAVE* decided that I will not
> work on a TPV... it's Snowglobe if it's going to be anything viewer
> related. I'm actually rather surprised no one's said anything about the
> merges of GPL code into viewer-internal. That bugged me more than the
> TPV stuff.
>
> I dunno about mono, though. I'm not too keen on learning yet another
> language. My brain's kinda full as it is and I would LOVE to branch the
> viewer into UI, rendering, network, and DB modules so that any one
> module can be upgraded at any time without any significant impact on any
> other.
>
> --GC
>
> On 04/02/2010 11:49 AM, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>> It's a lot of work to maintain, trust me - anyway, it'd be better to
>> convince the opensim team to allow viewer developers in.
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Argent Stonecutter
>> <secret.argent at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> Sounds like an "impure opensim" fork is needed.
>>>
>>> On 2010-04-02, at 08:19, Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> If these people also work on the viewer, they're banned from
>>>> contributing patches to opensim
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Carlo Wood<carlo at alinoe.com>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What is the reason that those fixes aren't incorporated in "pure"
>>>>> opensim?
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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