[opensource-dev] Can we, open source devs, still support Snowglobe? was: Can we be more productive, please?

[Thickbrick Sleaford]

On Friday 02 April 2010 16:36:45 Aleric Inglewood wrote:
<snip>
> Who of the active contributors (speak up if I missed you) are willing to
> make a stand and stop at least developing for snowglobe, unless we
> get a clear, understandable and official explanation what kind of legal
> liability TPV devs are facing? Don't you think we owe that to the other
> open developers that do not work on snowglobe, but on some TPV?
> 

I don't know if the TPV policy (agreement, really) really does expose 
developers to additional liability, but I don't know that it doesn't either. 
That is a BIG problem for hobbyist developers who are not going to hire  a 
lawyer to decipher the agreement for them.

I hope someone in a position to make policy decisions at LL asks the question 
of whether LL is interested in the existence of an open source community of 
(largely hobbyist) viewer developers, or is it content with having source that 
is open and a few business partners who use that source.

If the answer is the former, then this can be easily fixed by sending that 
document for another iteration to the lawyer who drafted it, with the 
instructions to make the problematic clauses clear in both English and 
Legalese.

Personally, even though I'm not directly affected by this agreement (it 
explicitly excludes Snowglobe), I don't see much point in continuing my 
involvement in this open source process if TPV developers were to be shut out 
of it.

This is very unfortunate since we are just now seeing the fruits of a large 
Linden effort (by Merov and others) to open the development process. This is 
is something we have been asking for for a long time, and deserves to be 
lauded publicly, not rewarded with the current opensource-dev drama.

This investment of time and effort by LL leads me to think that disruption of 
the open source community is NOT what this policy was intended to do.

Hoping this will be resolved soon,
-- 
Thickbrick