[sldev] Armchair lawyers (was: Plugin Licensing)

[Phoenix]

I am not a lawyer and nothing I suggest here should be construed as  
legal advice.
I am not an executive of Linden, so my statements do not represent a  
legally binding authority.


The GPL really only covers redistribution of the SL code itself. If  
you are not distributing an SL binary or a work derived from the  
code, we do not have much legal ground to object.

If you make a client with a plug-in component and redistribute that  
according to the terms of the GPL, we are not going to pursue that  
since that action is a protected form of copying. I urge you to  
design that carefully and make sure it makes it into our code-base  
since that will make it more likely to be adopted by the widest  
audience possible.

Once such an architecture is in place, you can write your own plug-in  
and use it. Since you are not distributing anything, the GPL does not  
come into play.

Once you enter the realm of distributing license incompatible  
software which shares process and address space, then it can be  
interpreted as a derivative work. I am not going to attempt to define  
that boundary for LL, and even the FSF passes the generalized form  
onto the legal system.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation


I think it is likely that LL will be amenable to working with third  
parties on closed plug-ins which require shared process space.  
However, that will primarily be a business decision after the plug-in  
framework exists.



On 2007 Apr 9, at 07:16, Mike Dickson wrote:
> Well, yes, I completely agree. The licensing issues are really up  
> to LL
> to define and enforce.
>
> I was responding to a comment that X piece of technology for plugins
> gets around the GPL. I disagreed. Much more important IMO is how  
> plugins
> work. And what the protocol is.  But I think I said that too.
>
> Personally I'm not interested in side-stepping the GPL. Much more
> interested in technology and implementation issues. Which is what I  
> was
> commenting on.
>
> Mike
>
> On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 19:52 -0700, John Hurliman wrote:
>> Mike Dickson wrote:
>>> [legal commentary]
>>>
>>>>
>>>> [more legal commentary]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -Jason
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> Are more and more CS majors going to law school these days, or is it
>> lawyers that decide to start programming? If I violated the Second  
>> Life
>> GPL, no one on this list has the power to do anything about it except
>> the Linden Lab corporation, so wouldn't it make sense to look to them
>> for any guidance on licensing issues?
>>
>> John Hurliman
>
> _______________________________________________
> Click here to unsubscribe or manage your list subscription:
> /index.html

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/attachments/20070409/5223153b/PGP-0001.pgp