Doron, all, hi. First, a caveat - I rarely post on these fora, considering them frivolous. However, the point Doron raises is both pertinent and non-frivolous and deserves a serious consideration. Thus, I am answering publicly since your original mail was public.
In order to answer your somewhat enigmatic email, I am make a number of assumptions which can be readily seen below. There are a number of Linux- and OSS-oriented service companies in Israel. Mine is one of them. Let's, for simplicity's sake, say that there are some 20 companies like mine (I am - for the sake of the discussion - referring to companies, not individual consultants and, moreover, lumping IT companies with development companies). Over the years we have been operational, there were a number of instances of clients asking us to circumvent or asking our advice on circumventing the GPL or other licensing mechanisms. In all of these cases, we explained that circumventing licenses, obfuscating components or other shenanigans are not our forte, interest, speciality or any other talent. Indeed, in every meeting with a prospective client, we take care to underline licensing issues and suggest obtaining duly qualified legal advice. I frequently refer people to such sites as GPL Violations homepage, Groklaw, etc. Alas, we still encounter attitudes like - "Oh, yeah? Well blipety-blip-bleep them! We developed it, we'll hold it near and dear to our heart" often enough. Therein lies the question - do we (my company) work with such people? Do we (the Linux- and OSS-oriented companies) work with such people? Do we share information - e.g. that "Gleeeping Gizmos of Gadzooks" want to develop a "Glumbophone G100" circumventing the GPL - among us, the various companies? Would that not expose us to legal risks? How to deal with this? What is your collective attitude? Marc -- ---MAV Marc A. Volovic Swiftouch, LTD [EMAIL PROTECTED] +972-544-676764 _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
