Licensing question

[Sidharth Kshatriya]

On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 4:26 AM, dalibor topic <dalibor.topic at oracle.com>
wrote:

> [...]
> On a technical mailing list, typically none of the participants,
> regardless who happens to be their employer, are qualified to provide
> opinions on legal matters in any jurisdiction.
>
> Qualification is not a matter of feelings.
>
> For many professions, such as the legal one, it's matter of local formal
> education and local certification.
>
>
You're absolutely correct in what you say. But, if you read Raffaello's
original question he says, "[...] I'm just looking for unbinding opinions,
not legal advice."

After many years of woking with various licenses and open source projects,
some developers do build an (amateur) understanding of licenses and
copyright. I think Raffaello was hoping for some non-formal help in that
sense -- which he did get from mailing list participants. There were some
very useful responses and Raffaello seemed to indicate that his question
was answered.

Contacting a lawyer qualified in intellectual property law (and familiar
with open source licensing) to give a legal opinion on a licensing query
is, of course, the correct and appropriate approach and it is for Raffaello
to make that determination whether he needs to go down that route.

My intention was also to suggest that open source projects like yours
*will* get the occasional licensing question. Developers send licensing
questions to technical mailing lists because these technical mailings lists
are practically the only forums where people understand the *specific*
software stack in detail to be able to give an (informal) answer.
Additionally, in many cases legal firms may end up giving very generic
advice as they don't have a deep technical understanding of the specific
software stack (unless you're will to pay top dollar for lawyers who may
have some software/engineering backgrounds).

Essentially, how you guys wish to deal with licensing questions is totally
your prerogative but answering those questions in this mailing list (with
the usual disclaimers) or kindly pointing people to practical, inexpensive
resources elsewhere will only help your project grow.

Sidharth