Fedora Board Recap 07-06-2011

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 11:24:26PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-07-06 at 23:12 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > 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.  
> 
> But that's the *concept* of an implied license, right? Not its
> applicability (ew) to any particular set of circumstances that commonly
> occurs in the F/OSS world?

I suppose, but there's no reason why it wouldn't apply to FOSS. 

- RF