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IAAL as well. I think you've convinced me. I was concerned that the use, performance or display may be a problem... but thinking it through, I do not really se

IAAL as well. I think you've convinced me. I was concerned that the use, performance or display may be a problem... but thinking it through, I do not really see this as an issue with most copyleft licenses. They are usually tied to distribution of code - which is reproduction. I echo your disclaimer. If you need a lawyer, get one.

lukas 10y ago
This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? I really appreciate the two thoughtful and informed comments at the top of this article here - why the disclaimers? I look for and give informal advice about all kinds of other topics that have the same levels of ambiguity and sometimes the same levels of importance as legal issues but it's always a real challenge to get a lawyer to weigh in informally on a legal issue. If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. I might be missing important context and I might just be wrong. If I ask someone else advice on any topic, I assume that there is an implicit disclaimer. Is there something fundamentally different about the law? Is it because lawyers are in the business of giving advice? Anyway, appreciate you guys weighing in and hope you do it more frequently :).
- xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
  Typically, as licensed members of a regulated profession they could be held liable for any advice they provide.
- teraflop 10y ago
  There are strong legal protections for the attorney-client relationship, such that lawyers are obligated to act scrupulously in their clients' interests. These rules exist for good reason, but a prudent lawyer will want to make it very clear when such a relationship exists and when it doesn't.
  - derefr 10y ago
    But why then, say "this is not legal advice" when you could instead say "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer"? Or how about "I'm not formally signing off on this statement as a product of my legal-professional persona, but you're free to take what I just wrote to another lawyer and get them to vouch for its veracity, which they probably will"? I hear that in military and political contexts all the time—"I can tell you this as a friend, but not in my role as X, so go find some other X who's allowed to speak on it if you need formalization"—but I never hear it from lawyers. It always seems to be phrased more as "what I'm about to write is probably wrong and you should go to get your own lawyer who will tell you something entirely different."
    - libertymcateer 10y ago
      > "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer" I say that all the time. I am sure it is in my comment history. E.g: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_freelance_in_new_york_city_and_i_need_to/d03cu2z/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_fre... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_need_bank_accounts_and_a_registered_business/d00cjut/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_n... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are_five_best_friends_who_dropped_out_of/czwir2g/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are...
- libertymcateer 10y ago
  > This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? Because an attorney-client relationship is created when the client reasonably believes it to have been created. As a result, you have to be really fucking clear that people are not your clients because, when making the determination of whether someone has reasonably determined that someone is their lawyer, courts look to what the average bloke would think - i.e., a total dumdum. So you really have to hit people over the head with the fact that no, you are not their lawyer. So, the second part of this is that when an attorney-client relationship is created, the attorney has a tremendous amount of duty to the client, and, if the client acts on the advice of the attorney and gets results they do not like, they can sue the attorney for malpractice. > If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. Are you a licensed Professional Engineer? If so, for the love of Odin's beard, stop giving informal advice, as you are exposing yourself to professional liability. Licensed professions - accounting, medicine, law, professional engineering - have extremely high duties of care to their clients. They are exposed to malpractice liability when things go wrong. They have ethical obligations. It can be extremely hard to fire delinquent or terrible clients. To put it a completely different way: lawyers give advice as their job. There is no such thing as "informal advice" from a lawyer, the same where there is no such thing as a "pick up game" with an NBA player. It is their primary occupation. I don't do it for free - I charge a pretty stiff hourly rate. And every time I take on a client, it has impacts on my firm's malpractice insurance. In fact, I cannot take on clients without the explicit approval of the managing partner at my law firm - I get his written approval for every single one. To make it clear, the managing partner is the guy who, if there was a war between all the lawyers, gets to wear the biggest, fanciest hat. So, no, I am not just going to do the thing I do for my day job as a favor to someone else, any more than your computer programmer friend wants to fix your iphone. Does that go some distance to answering your question?
  - polemic 10y ago
    So... :IANYL: _I am not your laywer_
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mirabilos 10y ago
This just shows that two lawyers did not even read my article and just comment on it demeaningly. Please do note that D.5 also covers “reproduce”, which _is_ “distribution of code”, _and_ that I address this point in my article. So, in short: If you need to give lots of money away, get a lawyer, but even then you’re not getting what you’re paying for. They also only cook with water, they also are just erring human meatbags.
- libertymcateer 10y ago
  I read the terms of service. The language is as follows: >Any Content you post publicly, including issues, comments, and contributions to other Users' repositories, may be viewed by others. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of your Content in repositories they control). >If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to access your Content through the GitHub Service, and to use, display and perform your Content, and to reproduce your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality. You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. "Reproduce" is limited by "solely on github." I simply disagree with your analysis. I've read many hundreds and written dozens of software licenses - this is what I do for a living. Your argument, up to this point, is unpersuasive. I am always willing to change my opinion based on a persuasive argument or evidence, but you are not providing that - you are simply saying I am commenting on it "demeaningly." That is not a "responsive," argument, and, in this case, it is also false. Have you asked any lawyers about this? Or are you just relying on your interpretation?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    GitHub asks for a right to distribute unattributed snippets of the code for the search in the ToS. If the license under which I got the code from someone else specifies that I can only distribute the code or snippets if I am including the license header, then that causes an issue. (I asked a family member who is a lawyer about that, and they agreed that this seems to be a problem. I’ve tried to get approval from all authors of the code I used to be on the safe side). Specifically, the terms under which I licensed the code I put on GitHub from a third party include > provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program. [EDIT] Due to "you are submitting too fast, please slow down", I will only answer questions on this comment via email.

lukas 10y ago

This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? I really appreciate the two thoughtful and informed comments at the top of this article here - why the disclaimers? I look for and give informal advice about all kinds of other topics that have the same levels of ambiguity and sometimes the same levels of importance as legal issues but it's always a real challenge to get a lawyer to weigh in informally on a legal issue. If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. I might be missing important context and I might just be wrong. If I ask someone else advice on any topic, I assume that there is an implicit disclaimer. Is there something fundamentally different about the law? Is it because lawyers are in the business of giving advice? Anyway, appreciate you guys weighing in and hope you do it more frequently :).

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
Typically, as licensed members of a regulated profession they could be held liable for any advice they provide.
teraflop 10y ago
There are strong legal protections for the attorney-client relationship, such that lawyers are obligated to act scrupulously in their clients' interests. These rules exist for good reason, but a prudent lawyer will want to make it very clear when such a relationship exists and when it doesn't.
- derefr 10y ago
  But why then, say "this is not legal advice" when you could instead say "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer"? Or how about "I'm not formally signing off on this statement as a product of my legal-professional persona, but you're free to take what I just wrote to another lawyer and get them to vouch for its veracity, which they probably will"? I hear that in military and political contexts all the time—"I can tell you this as a friend, but not in my role as X, so go find some other X who's allowed to speak on it if you need formalization"—but I never hear it from lawyers. It always seems to be phrased more as "what I'm about to write is probably wrong and you should go to get your own lawyer who will tell you something entirely different."
  - libertymcateer 10y ago
    > "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer" I say that all the time. I am sure it is in my comment history. E.g: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_freelance_in_new_york_city_and_i_need_to/d03cu2z/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_fre... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_need_bank_accounts_and_a_registered_business/d00cjut/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_n... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are_five_best_friends_who_dropped_out_of/czwir2g/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are...
libertymcateer 10y ago
> This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? Because an attorney-client relationship is created when the client reasonably believes it to have been created. As a result, you have to be really fucking clear that people are not your clients because, when making the determination of whether someone has reasonably determined that someone is their lawyer, courts look to what the average bloke would think - i.e., a total dumdum. So you really have to hit people over the head with the fact that no, you are not their lawyer. So, the second part of this is that when an attorney-client relationship is created, the attorney has a tremendous amount of duty to the client, and, if the client acts on the advice of the attorney and gets results they do not like, they can sue the attorney for malpractice. > If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. Are you a licensed Professional Engineer? If so, for the love of Odin's beard, stop giving informal advice, as you are exposing yourself to professional liability. Licensed professions - accounting, medicine, law, professional engineering - have extremely high duties of care to their clients. They are exposed to malpractice liability when things go wrong. They have ethical obligations. It can be extremely hard to fire delinquent or terrible clients. To put it a completely different way: lawyers give advice as their job. There is no such thing as "informal advice" from a lawyer, the same where there is no such thing as a "pick up game" with an NBA player. It is their primary occupation. I don't do it for free - I charge a pretty stiff hourly rate. And every time I take on a client, it has impacts on my firm's malpractice insurance. In fact, I cannot take on clients without the explicit approval of the managing partner at my law firm - I get his written approval for every single one. To make it clear, the managing partner is the guy who, if there was a war between all the lawyers, gets to wear the biggest, fanciest hat. So, no, I am not just going to do the thing I do for my day job as a favor to someone else, any more than your computer programmer friend wants to fix your iphone. Does that go some distance to answering your question?
- polemic 10y ago
  So... :IANYL: _I am not your laywer_
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

mirabilos 10y ago

This just shows that two lawyers did not even read my article and just comment on it demeaningly. Please do note that D.5 also covers “reproduce”, which _is_ “distribution of code”, _and_ that I address this point in my article. So, in short: If you need to give lots of money away, get a lawyer, but even then you’re not getting what you’re paying for. They also only cook with water, they also are just erring human meatbags.

libertymcateer 10y ago
I read the terms of service. The language is as follows: >Any Content you post publicly, including issues, comments, and contributions to other Users' repositories, may be viewed by others. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of your Content in repositories they control). >If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to access your Content through the GitHub Service, and to use, display and perform your Content, and to reproduce your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality. You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. "Reproduce" is limited by "solely on github." I simply disagree with your analysis. I've read many hundreds and written dozens of software licenses - this is what I do for a living. Your argument, up to this point, is unpersuasive. I am always willing to change my opinion based on a persuasive argument or evidence, but you are not providing that - you are simply saying I am commenting on it "demeaningly." That is not a "responsive," argument, and, in this case, it is also false. Have you asked any lawyers about this? Or are you just relying on your interpretation?
- kuschku 10y ago
  GitHub asks for a right to distribute unattributed snippets of the code for the search in the ToS. If the license under which I got the code from someone else specifies that I can only distribute the code or snippets if I am including the license header, then that causes an issue. (I asked a family member who is a lawyer about that, and they agreed that this seems to be a problem. I’ve tried to get approval from all authors of the code I used to be on the safe side). Specifically, the terms under which I licensed the code I put on GitHub from a third party include > provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program. [EDIT] Due to "you are submitting too fast, please slow down", I will only answer questions on this comment via email.