[Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results

Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net
Tue Mar 10 00:33:54 UTC 2009


David Gerard wrote:
> Remember that licenses are not merely a game of Nomic, but responses
> to a given legal threat model.
>   

Not necessarily a "given" legal threat, but an even weaker "perceived" 
legal threat.
> In this case, the threat model is: what if some raving and/or
> malicious lunatic who has copyright on a piece of this thing drags
> someone into court over it?
>   

Copyright paranoia exists as a socially acceptable response to raving 
lunatics.
> The reason for the license is so that the defendant can point at the
> license and say "I can do this per the license." (And probably "and
> per common practice," because law is squishier than Nomic.)
>   

That, but also it gives a legal right of action as plaintiffs to the 
lunatics.
> So the aims of the suggested terms for relicensing will not be to
> achieve some theoretical outcome that makes everyone as happy as
> possible, but to provide sufficient results to be usable in terms of:
>
> 1. giving reusers confidence they can defend themselves against a
> raving and/or malicious lunatic in court;
> 2. not pissing off so much of the community they fork.
>
>   

That makes sense.

Ec





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