On 2019-01-28, rhkra...@gmail.com <rhkra...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Just another aside: One of my takes on lawyers is that they interpret laws >> and take legal positions for various reasons, often to further their own >> or their client's interests, and then are willing to fight the legal >> battle that may ensue. A lawyer expressing an opinion does not make that >> opinion correct / legal.
Earthshaking! (Editor's note: there exist lawyers who are not amoral shysters and who even devote themselves to just causes.) I guess the following is pertinent: https://hackaday.com/2018/09/27/can-you-take-back-open-source-code/ REPUTATIONAL LOSSES So if a developer is free to license their code in diametrically opposed ways (simultaneously closed and open source), and it’s acknowledged that in the absence of a Contributor License Agreement they retain the uncontested ownership of any code they write, the situation becomes tricky. Does it not follow that they have the right to walk back a promise to make their source code open, if a scenario presents itself in which the author feels it’s no longer appropriate? Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative and author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar believes they may have that right. In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing list, Eric specifically addresses the threat some developers have made about attempting to pull their code from the kernel: First, let me confirm that this threat has teeth. I researched the relevant law when I was founding the Open Source Initiative. In the U.S. there is case law confirming that reputational losses relating to conversion of the rights of a contributor to a GPLed project are judicable in law. I do not know the case law outside the U.S., but in countries observing the Berne Convention without the U.S.’s opt-out of the “moral rights” clause, that clause probably gives the objectors an even stronger case. https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/23/212 Anyway, it appears there's a new Linux CoC (providing for a "harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation"), Linus is stepping aside to work on his relational problems (with regrets for being a dyed-in-the-wool asshole all these years), and, well, all hell has broken loose. I'm uncertain how this all articulates into a coherent whole. Apparently the worry (or threat?) is a disgruntled hacker (doubtless one of the old male dinosaurs), ejected for violating the new LGBT-friendly CoC, might rescind the license grant for his code (a prospect Raymond doesn't find judicially implausible).
