Re: [gentoo-project] GLEP76, legal liability around misrepresentation in copyright, real names, how it's handled at FSF, SFC & at the US copyright office!

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 2:50 AM Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> What could the outcomes be? It would come down to penalties as well as
> the damages suffered by "A" in the publication of Work "X".
>
> The one thing you can be certain of is that lawyers and the legal system
> will walk away being paid, and somebody else's bank account will be
> emptier!
>

People need to keep in mind that there hasn't been a ton of litigation
over this stuff in the context of open source software projects.  That
means that there is a ton of conjecture, and very little in the way of
actual case law.  That doesn't mean that lawyers can't offer good
advice in general, based on part on case law in similar domains where
it exists, but it is very hard for any expert to offer certainty when
ultimately the decisions are in the hands of a court.

I'm not saying that legal advice isn't a good thing. I'm just pointing
out that the average lawyer doesn't deal with open source intellectual
property law, and the few experts that exist in this space are largely
going off of common/best practices.  I'm sure most of them would have
said that you can't copyright an API until a court ruled that
Sun/Oracle did (a ruling many would disagree with, and which another
court might disagree with, but it is a ruling all the same).

Nobody can offer certainty in this space.  You just do your best in
good faith and hope that being a good neighbor pays off.  IMO our
biggest defense is that anybody going after us would look bad as long
as we're generally trying to do the right thing, and since we aren't
profiting from our code really there isn't much a suit would actually
accomplish since any code we publish is already public.  Still, if
somebody wanted to throw a lot of money at suing us then it isn't like
we could afford a strong defense unless somebody came to our aid or a
lot of donors stepped up.

Again, not my call and I think there is plenty of room for
disagreement, but there is also something to be said about
professionalism in an environment where Boaty McBoatface isn't one of
your top committers...

-- 
Rich