[OSM-legal-talk] How to achieve a better quality legal debate?

[SteveC]

Two things have stuck me about the recent legal debate.

First, a large number of people have not seen a BSD vs. GPL debate before.

Second, many people think it's ok to preface things with "I'm not a 
lawyer, BUT"


I think we can attack the meta-problem at least and create a better 
level of debate by tackling these two things. It's something we'd need 
to implement as a community and as our culture if it's to get anywhere, 
but let me throw these suggestions out.


I propose that legal debate is politely and repeatedly asked to move to 
the legal-talk list. Not because it isn't generally useful or important, 
but because it scares the crap out of newbies or even people who've been 
on the list for a while but can't deal with the traffic.

"IANAL" (I'm Not A Lawyer) is just not very practical. Few of us, I 
think, would be happy to go on a string theory mailing list and preface 
our pronouncements about areas of physics with "I'm not a physicist". Or 
brain surgery with "I didn't go to medical school". Law is hard and 
regarded by most economies as a highly paid practice which requires much 
study.

I propose that people saying IANAL and *then issuing sweeping 
statements* be politely asked to help in more practical ways. Such as, 
paying for a lawyer, helping organise a lawyer who may help us for free 
or some other way such as a legal day, the conference legal panel and so on.

Tertiary to this, I propose we set up a newbie@ mailing list for newbies 
staffed by helpful old hands. This is because I repeatedly hear from 
people who can't handle talk@ but would like help getting up and running 
and then joining one or more of the other lists.

Once there, I propose that people joining the legal-talk list are 
strongly encouraged to learn broadly about some key issues. About BSD 
vs. GPL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_and_GPL_licensing
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

which is an age-old debate. Although some are surprised to see it every 
month or two they should be aware it's similar to many other groups who 
have (had) this. About CDDB and Gracenote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB#History

(perhaps someone knows of a better reference for this that goes through 
how angry people were - while people trusting OSMF with their copyright 
is heartening, the risks of not doing it right should be pointed out).


I think we all have useful things to say about the various aspects of 
the license and in this context I'm not proposing one way or the other. 
I'm suggesting that in order to move forward, and not repeat the debate 
in another few weeks, we should try to put some of the energy instead in 
to practicalities.

It's something we *can* fix. It's my responsibility as the guy who chose 
it to try and find a consensus here. There will of course be some who 
are strongly for or against viral licenses or other issues of a 
'religeous' or unresolvable nature. There are some things which can 
broadly be resolved such as the notion of a derivative work.

Unfortunately there is a third catagory of problems which are simply 
case law. We don't have the money or time to resolve those which havn't 
been decided yet in court.

So, let's focus on the (relatively) solvable first. Then, armed with 
legal opinion on the core issues we can begin to tackle the more prosaic 
issues.


I would have sent this to just legal-talk but I think it important that 
those on talk@ have a think about what they want to see on that list and 
how the to and fro affects them. I've heard from many people who like 
talk@ but are bemused or put off by the large thread on village greens / 
license.


What do you think?

have fun,

SteveC steve at asklater.com http://www.asklater.com/steve/