Copyrights and Licenses

[Mark Hamburg <mhamburg@...>]

Some of the issues that corporate lawyers will worry about:

* Does one have the right to use the source code?

* Who granted that right?

* Under what terms?

* Did that person have the power to grant that right?

* Who bears liability if that right is disputed?

For example, as I understand it, the authors of Lua assert that they wrote
Lua but they won't bear the burden of saying so in court and the license
effectively says so:

"THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
IN THE SOFTWARE."

I think there was some talk of a commercial license for Lua under which they
would stand behind their authorship a bit more firmly in exchange for money.

Getting back to the Wiki, I think -- though I'm not a lawyer -- that one
could with sufficiently visible notices establish a policy that anyone
posting code to the Wiki gave up rights to sue for copyright violations
involving that code. Consumers of the code should beware however that the
person who posts the code might not be the person who actually owns the
copyright.

Mark