Hi Folks,
There is an exciting announcement out today:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7711938137.html
Essentially, OSDL has funded a community oriented pro-bono legal service for Free and Open Source Software Projects. The Center is led by Eben Moglen, the chief counsel for the FSF.
I've been speaking privately with Eben Moglen about this new effort, and he tells me that they would like to have the Wine Project as one if their very first clients.
Candidly, this seems fantastic to me; one of the difficult things that I face when promoting Wine is peoples Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about the legality of Wine. Having an opportunity to clarify these legal issues is probably the most important thing that could happen for Wine, in my opinion (well, okay, maybe it's less important than support for Pirates! <grin>).
However, before I go off to request the services of the SFLC, I thought I would post this announcement here and open it for any discussion. I'd particularly like to hear if folks can think of any reasons why this might be a bad thing.
Finally, the key objectives from my standpoint are as follows: 1. Get an opinion written on Wine and copyright issues (imho, we have no IP issues here) 2. Get some legal research done on Patent issues I don't know how this will turn out, so I think we should wait for the research. 3. Investigate the legal doctrine surrounding what use a monopoly can make of its patents; I know that US antitrust law provides some restraints, but it would be great to have a legal opinion on the matter.
Thoughts? Comments?
Cheers,
Jeremy