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

[Robin Cornelius]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Gordon Wendt <GordonWendt at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm no lawyer either but I think you're right about knowledge vs code but
> that being said even viewing the code opens the team up to lawsuits under
> the assumption (wrongly) that any code not created in a clean room
> environment could be tainted by people who saw the source code so even
> seeing the code could open up whichever team we're talking about in this
> juncture (RealXTend or Opensim) to a lawsuit from Ll, not to mention a
> breach of contract lawsuit from LL against anyone who signed the submission
> agreement with Ll then went on to help one of these other projects.
>

hmm, been following this discussion with interest as i got *shouted*
at once for trying to help opensim with the 1.19.6 logon fiasco.

Anyway, i think i am completely missing the point here and probably
replying to the wrong point in the discussion thread too :-) but why
would "J. Random opensim developer" get sued *even* if they just
copied chunks of the viewer code. The viewer code is GPL so yes this
would then force the GPL on top of opensim and this would mean that
anyone making a derived version of opensim would have to publish there
source as per the GPL. The only person who could get sued in such a
situation is if one took opensim (that had some gpl code) and
developed a product and did not publish there changes. No one just
developing opensim would be effected by this in anyway.

It is possible to take GPL code into a BSD project but the GPL and BSD
licences must BOTH be followed. At any point GPL code could be removed
from the project by anyone and the BSD license is still 100% intact

Its *MUCH* harder to take BSD in to a GPL project as some of the
freedoms of BSD is lost by the GPL requirement that code must be
shared so i believe this would breach the BSD license.

These examples are not commutable and are not exact opposites of each other.

So i really can't see the issue here. I would say lift any code you
need and develop opensim faster and with less pain and get the added
benift that the GPL would stop "J random company" from taking opensim
adding loads of features and developing a commercial project without
contributing the code back to the community. Unless thats what you
want?

Just my personal views anyway.

Robin