So you understand how LL employing such specialists, working a language the community "can't even understand", so admittedly protect their own self-interest (because it's a business), might create a a skewed balance of power that might cause the disadvantaged party to be mistrustful... right?
People understand the GPL, or BSD. People don't understand your policies. I've never known a popular open source project with such legalistic encumbrances. Cheers, On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Kent Quirk (Q Linden) <q...@lindenlab.com> wrote: > I'm emphatically not a lawyer and I don't speak for our legal team. But: > > * Legalese is a specialized language. It's not strictly English, and it's not > always amenable to "common sense" interpretation. Think of lawyers as people > who write code in an underspecified language for a buggy compiler, and you > begin to understand why legalese is the way it is. There's a lot of law that > isn't stated, but is actually implied by the context of the existing settled > law. What that means is that if you're not a lawyer, you probably shouldn't > be attempting to interpret legal documents -- especially not for other > people. Similarly, if you're not a programmer, attempting to interpret > program source code is a risky business. Programmers are especially > susceptible to trying to interpret legal documents using a normal dictionary > because they're logical thinkers. That doesn't always work. If you have legal > questions about the implication of documents, you should ask a lawyer, not a > mailing list. > > * Similarly, any comment by one of Linden's lawyers in this forum or any > other could possibly be treated as legally binding. That also goes for Linden > employees, especially those with any seniority. So you're unlikely to get > further remarks or "clarifications", except general statements that don't > address specific questions. The policy was revised based on comments on this > list and elsewhere. That's probably a pretty good indication that Linden > Lab's lawyers now think it's clear enough to state its intent and to stand up > in court if they need it to. > > Q > > On Mar 21, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Carlo Wood wrote: > >> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 05:04:58PM +0100, Tayra Dagostino wrote: >>> maybe we cannot sync.... this isn't a restriction against development >>> based on GPL, is a restriction against ability to connect LL grid with >>> a 3rd party viewer... >> >> No it's not. If that were the case it would say "User", not "Developer". >> Also, I don't read "you will not be able to connect", I read "you will >> be liable for any damages". Quite a different thing. > > _______________________________________________ > Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: > http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev > Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges > _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
