Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Glenn Otis Brown said:
> ***Warranties? Up to licensors

works should be As-Is. Fitness and Merchantability are
not something any gift economy contributer can afford.

Some argue for a "right to contribute" clause.
but this seems to be more a desire to put
the SCO shields up than anything else.

a certification of the right ot contribute the work
will not prevent Microsoft lackeys like SCO from
waging a proxy war against Linux.

SCO's allegation is "That's our code".
SCO must prove this beyond a 50% doubt to win.

the ONLY thing that would "short circuit" this
case from ever going any farther than
"That's ours" "Oh, never mind"
is a paper trail associating every contribution
to a specific author. and possibly a file cabinet
full of "Copyright disclaimer's" from all the
contributers employers.

It then goes from a length civil case to
an amazing short court appearance that should
sound something like this.

SCO: "Thats our code".

IBM: "No. Alice contributed this and she works for RedHat.
Bob contributed that and he works for Yahoo.
Charlie contributed that and he works for Walmart.
and here's the paperwork to prove it."

<whooomp>

SCO: "Ow! get it off me. get it off me."

Judge: "You're an idiot, get out of my courtroom.
case dismissed"


A warranty of the right ot contribute doesn't
provide sufficient evidence to get the case
thrown out immediately. If SCO claims the
TCP/IP protocol code is theirs, and there
is no trail of who wrote the GNU-GPL version
of the TCP/IP code, then you're looking at
a long court case.


what would be needed for any major multi-contributer
project is a paper trail of who contributed what.
that's more a project guideline rather than
a licensing issue.