Please stop (Was: Copyright issues re Debian website)

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 10:20:08AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:

> And it's entirely absurd that the other 999 producers of a collective 
> work would be permanently impeded by this fact. IMO, a reasonable 
> process to get around this exists and /can be used,/ but is not 
> currently backed up by an affirmative statement in law or case law. 

I'm getting more than a little tired of reading idle speculation on what is
or is not in the law from people (ok, one person, really) who have never, as
far as I am led to believe, been called to the bar.  I think Mr Perens has
already been invited to ask formally for legal advice, if he is in a
position to do so.  I don't see how aimless speculation by a bunch of
non-lawyers is going to get us anywhere, though.

Put this another way: if you overheard lawyers pontificating on what the
innards of a C program might or might not do, you'd be within your rights to
roll your eyes.  I'm not sure why the case of geeks discussing the law that
way is any different.

A