Spelling out openess

[David Bovill]

On 24 Nov 2005, at 05:01, Chipp Walters wrote:

> Finally, if my above interpretation of your first post is  
> incorrect, then please accept my apology.

Thanks for the kind comments (we cna all be sensitive). From my  
original post:

> Now of course for a small piece of code like this - well may as  
> well be given away public domain (which is dubious legally in many  
> countries). But this is an example.

It should have read "just" an example... So yes i was only trying to  
make concrete the problems that occur when the legal status of such  
posts is not clear.


> Sean's excellent SMTP library is an excellent example of sharing w/ 
> out expecting payback.

Agreed a wonderful and generous contribution.


On 23 Nov 2005, at 22:23, Sean Shao wrote:

> Well I've stated in the source code that no license is needed from  
> me to use the libraries

And clearly licensed :)


The problem occurs with large collections taken from sources such as  
this list.


On 24 Nov 2005, at 03:45, Sean Shao wrote:
> A legal document that you sign is legally binding whether you read  
> it or not (hence the reason I read everything I sign and refuse to  
> sign almost everything ;-) )

My understanding too.


On 23 Nov 2005, at 23:20, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> draconian TOSes like we see on AOL and elsewhere about how posting  
> here obliterates all of your rights and grants total control of  
> your words to the list owner.

The idea would be to do precisely the opposite. To indicate clearly  
that such contributions were all in the public domain (note the  
problems with this) or under as free a license as possible so that  
they can be included as safely as possible in useful free or  
commercial collections - such as the fab Scripters Scrapbook.

For the same reasons, if this were part on an explicit open source  
policy, well documented, legally sorted and marketed - then it would  
put all of us in a much better position to tender for the sort of  
government contracts that Andre Garzia, myself and others have  
pointed out as being prime application areas that Revolution  
developers can play an important role in.