Terje Slettebų <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>From: "David Abrahams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> My meeting with a technology lawyer at Harvard last week led me to >> believe that boost authors are already opened up to having to defend >> against a patent suit. We are responsible for our own actions. No >> matter what we write down, if we violate copyright or patent >> restrictions, we can be held liable. > > Yes, but wasn't the point of the license to possibly protect the > authors against lawsuits from _users_ of the library, if it later > turns out to contain patented code?
It is my understanding that warranting something that turns out to be false offers the author less protection than warranting nothing at all. > However, is it necessary to do anything about that? In other words, > did CompuServe risk lawsuits from the users of the GIF format, when > it turned out to be patented, and CompuServe was unaware of it? IMHO, yes. But AFAICT in this litigious society, everything we do in the public sphere entails a legal risk. A lawsuit can be brought by anyone, claiming almost anything, for almost any reason. A lawsuit with no merit whatsoever will be likely to be thrown out early, but not neccessarily. -- David Abrahams [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://www.boost-consulting.com Boost support, enhancements, training, and commercial distribution _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost