Mark Hammond wrote:
... Actually, this is a good point. I know the issue of payment may get in the way, but it would make sense to have any future proposed licenses reviewed by a lawyer "on our side" - eg, someone whose mandate is to give a legal opinion on the risks and liabilities of the _user_ of the license.
Interesting thought!
Obviously the CNRI lawers are protecting their (ie, CNRI's) interests, and everyone on this group is concerned about their own (ie, personally, their company, or companies they wish to introduct Python into) interests.
Because of these varied interests, I don't think a review by a particular lawyer will be greatly helpful. The question will still remain: "did the lawyer review it from [my/our/company] perspective?" This will lead people back into the same review cycle.
... But as I said, who will pay? If nothing else, we should ensure the OSI approves of the new license... Or maybe we can convince CNRI there is real and serious concern, and they could pay for an external IP lawyer?
Definitely having an OSI certification will be great (cool stuff on the cert for the existing license!). Having Bruce Perens review the license would also be a great boon (see www.perens.com for some of his writings; also see http://perens.com/Termination.html specifically). Licenses are a tough issue. I had to go through this entire morass when deciding what to do with mod_dav. There are a lot of varieties and issues and stuff to cover. I've read a bunch of license (not to mention a bazillion legal documents during the eShop/acquisition days). Not always exciting reading :-), but usually quite interesting. At this point, I think it is a great thing that CNRI is reviewing the license. Unfortunately, the license wasn't as non-controversial as it was thought to be :-(. I'm more than happy to wait and see where they go with the license. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/