Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 10:45:01 +0900 From: Joel <rees@ddcom.co.jp> To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: BSD legal question Message-ID: <20050519103050.B98B.REES@ddcom.co.jp> In-Reply-To: <428BE69F.50CA5ADC@cs.berkeley.edu> References: <428BE69F.50CA5ADC@cs.berkeley.edu>
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On Wed, 18 May 2005 18:06:39 -0700 "Daniel S. Wilkerson" <dsw@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote > I have a rather strange legal question that I'm not sure who to ask of; IMHO, legal questions are always strange. In the best of circumstances, our modern lawyers believe that legal language should be precise, which means that the language is not the same as used in the real world. In the worst of cases, lawyers seem to live in a world in which language can actually be precise, which means they do not live in the real world. We find it convenient to cooperate, in finding some mutually agreeable semantic set in which we allow the language to be precise, because when we don't things tend to degenerate into war. Good lawyers find it in their best interests to help us find a mutually agreeable set of semantics. And that's the short version of why legal questions are always strange. > it > is about GPL vs. BSD but not about the FreeBSD project directly. Asking > someone at the university is the last thing I want to do. Do you have > someone who answers legal questions? It is rather pro-BSD so I didn't > want to write the FSF. I'll spare you the question itself if you are not > interested. I am not aware of a BSD-centric legal team. That means the BSD community must do one of the following: rely on the GPL-centric legal teams, start setting up some BSD-centric legal teams (in other words, hire our own), take the burden of interpretations on ourselves as a community, or just slough it all off and plow ahead. Near as I can tell, the present direction is the latter two options. Therefore, if you won't/can't hire your own lawyer and don't want to resort to the GPL-centric group (who really might be able to help just fine), you might be willing to take the risk of putting the question up to the community you are most involved in. So, what's on your mind? Care to share your question? -- Joel Rees <rees@ddcom.co.jp> digitcom, inc. $B3t<02q<R%G%8%3%`(B Kobe, Japan +81-78-672-8800 ** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp>; **
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