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The email being sent out clearly states: "If we do not hear from you, we will assume that you have no objection."

ckastner 10y ago
The email can state all it wants, but from a legal point of view, assuming consent merely by absence of dissent is nonsense -- at least in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with. There are exceptions to this, but this is not one of those cases. Just assuming that the email has been read is already a far stretch.
- jwilk 10y ago
  The process raises my eyebrows, too, but apparently that's how it was done for other projects: * https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-commits/2011-November/010353.html https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-commits/2011-Nove... (grep for "It is possible") * https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/05/25/relicensing-dolphin/#a-legal-gray-area https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/05/25/relicensing-dolphin/... * https://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58 https://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58 (grep for "it is not necessary")
  - ckastner 10y ago
    Ah. In those cases, it appears that the overwhelming majority (>= 95%) of developers explicitly agreed to the relicensing, with the remaining minority at least not objecting. That is still not assent by the remaining 5%, but was apparently sufficient for relicensing of the whole work in the relevant jurisdictions. In that context, the quote from the OpenSSL email appears to be well-phrased, as it really only assumes the absence of objections.
DannyBee 10y ago
If so, that's uh, yeah, remarkably stupid. I would guess they meant "don't object to the plan in general". They certainly can't obtain legal consent to relicense this way, and anyone who told them the could pretty much has no idea what they are talking about, at least in the US. There is a lot of citation to "lawyers in the past told them X" with no actual data or description of what those lawyers said, caselaw they relied upon, jurisdiction they are talking about, etc.

The email can state all it wants, but from a legal point of view, assuming consent merely by absence of dissent is nonsense -- at least in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with. There are exceptions to this, but this is not one of those cases. Just assuming that the email has been read is already a far stretch.

jwilk 10y ago
The process raises my eyebrows, too, but apparently that's how it was done for other projects: * https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-commits/2011-November/010353.html https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-commits/2011-Nove... (grep for "It is possible") * https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/05/25/relicensing-dolphin/#a-legal-gray-area https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/05/25/relicensing-dolphin/... * https://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58 https://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58 (grep for "it is not necessary")
- ckastner 10y ago
  Ah. In those cases, it appears that the overwhelming majority (>= 95%) of developers explicitly agreed to the relicensing, with the remaining minority at least not objecting. That is still not assent by the remaining 5%, but was apparently sufficient for relicensing of the whole work in the relevant jurisdictions. In that context, the quote from the OpenSSL email appears to be well-phrased, as it really only assumes the absence of objections.

DannyBee 10y ago

If so, that's uh, yeah, remarkably stupid. I would guess they meant "don't object to the plan in general". They certainly can't obtain legal consent to relicense this way, and anyone who told them the could pretty much has no idea what they are talking about, at least in the US. There is a lot of citation to "lawyers in the past told them X" with no actual data or description of what those lawyers said, caselaw they relied upon, jurisdiction they are talking about, etc.