Re: [liblo] Fwd: Fwd: liblo licensing

> However, our corporate lawyers have signed off on us both using, and in fact distributing code under the GPL (v3). In absolute terms it was quite expensive to get their software licensing experts legal opinion, but a small fraction of our annual legal costs. We could have got indemnity insurance even without expert legal opinion however

Can't wait to buy a policy of my own so that I can start using "free software".


> As you correctly identified, it's 90% an ideological difference. Liblo authors are not going to change their ideology over what we know to be irrelevant, groundless hypothetical concerns — and you're not going to change your's over what you presumably see as a bunch of misguided licensing zealots.


Actually my concerns are in a sense irrelevant and hypothetical, because the GPL is practically speaking unenforceable on a work without significant value, because civil damages are limited to fair economic compensation.  But I'm sure that wouldn't stop FSF from trying, as they designed GPL to keep themselves in business, and lawyers don't need to win to stay in business.

Unless you are talking about a major work like the Linux kernel, the entire debate of GPL vs BSD vs whatever is simply void of substance; the only consequence in the flesh-and-blood part of the universe is the feeding and care of lawyers in the name of an idea, and of course the general discouragement of potential users as well.  I actually have no objection to the idea, nor to the feeding and care of lawyers.  The only thing I am interested in promoting is use of OSC.

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Andy W. Schmeder
email: andy [at] cnmat.berkeley.edu