Re: [HACKERS] Revised Copyright: is this more palatable?

At 13:04 4/07/00 -0300, The Hermit Hacker wrote:
>>
>> Certainly if I were a private company who wanted to use PG, I would feel
>> more comfortable with this clause, but that is not how you are marketing
it.
>
>Wait ... you had me on the first section, but this second one does confuse
>me ... "reducing the rights of developers" applies to the "Any person who
>contributes..." clause, or the BOLD liability clauses?

It was meant to apply to "Any person who...", but based on legal advice, I
was a little wrong. Assuming I could be reasonably expected to be aware of
the BSD nature of the project, and the terms of the BSD license, then by
making a submission, my submission comes under the BSD.

I do still own copyright, but I can't prevent people using it in a
PG-derived project. But I *can* prevent them using it in software to run a
meat-grinder, assuming that software is not recognizably a PG derived
database (as perceived by a reasonable person). This could be relevant to
Jan who wrote compression code, although I suspect he's philosophically
opposed to preventing his actual source code being used in, eg, "The New
Fangled Microsoft Disk Compressor, using advanced Compression Technology
(tm)".

The new clause removes this right.

>I'm definitely not sold on the "Any person who contributes or submits any
>modification..." clause, and *if* your IP lawyer comes back that your
>understanding is accurate, I'm even less sold on it ... look forward to
>hearing back on that ...

I still don't like it for the above reason.

>For me, the only thing that I really like is the three extra BOLD paras
>that extend the protection from liability to encompass ALL DEVELOPERS
>instead of just "UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA", which I don't believe any of
>us falls under? :)

Yes, but legal advice so far suggests it is useless in Australia (&
probably the UK), where it is not lawful to remove warranties. All you can
do here is reduce liability. More on this in a future email.

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