[sldev] Fwd: [Opensim-dev] Violating the GPL by looking (Re: Voice Module)

Deryck Hodge deryck at samba.org
Wed Mar 19 08:46:47 PDT 2008


On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 2:17 AM, Callum Lerwick <seg at haxxed.com> wrote:
>
>  On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 07:54 +0200, Jani Pirkola wrote:
>  > Google "inevitable disclosure". This is the direction case law is
>  > heading towards, sadly.
>
>  I just did. First hit is this:
>
>  http://www.ivanhoffman.com/inevitable.html

Hi, all.

Sorry to jump in here late in the discussion.  I'm relatively new to
this list, too. However, I"d like to ask -- what is the issue being
discussed in all of this? I got a little lost. :-)

Is the issue that someone, just by looking at LL's open source GPL
code, would be legally liable if he/she worked on OpenSim because
OpenSim is BSD? If that's the fear, I would like to suggest that the
license can only apply to derivative code, not derivative knowledge.

I'm certainly no lawyer, but I have heard very knowledgeable lawyers
and very knowledgeable developers in legal matters talk at length
about this. The GPL clearly protects code, not knowledge.

I know this is a fine line, and maybe it's that line that is being
discussed here. But when I see things suggesting that someone who has
just looked at GPL code will be barred from contributing to
BSD-licensed code, just because of some supposed tainted knowledge,
that seems an inaccurate reading of the protections the GPL offers.

Cheers,
deryck

-- 
Deryck Hodge
Senior Programmer
Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive
Samba Team
http://www.devurandom.org/
Anders Falworth in Second Life


More information about the SLDev mailing list