Fedora Board Recap 07-06-2011

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 07:02:33PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-07-06 at 16:48 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > I think there may be some confusion on this one particular
> > point. Something can be licensed even if it doesn't have an explicit
> > license notice on it. Implicit licensing is pervasive in free software
> > development.
> 
> Is there some kind of solid legal basis for this opinion? It seems
> speculative. Has it been established definitively that, say, a patch
> sent to the mailing list of a well-established F/OSS project definitely
> has an implicit license? 

Not in the sense that there's been, say, US case law on that specific
fact pattern. However, the doctrine of implied license is well
established in US copyright law.  

- RF