Ruby legalities & The Ruby Foundation

P

Phil Tomson

There have been several posts recently about the legality of using Ruby in
commercial products. One poster even refuses to look at the Ruby source
code because he fears it will somehow taint his BSD licensed code.

I think most of these fears are unfounded and are based
on misunderstandings of the current Ruby license, but they seem to be
excluding Ruby from some commercial projects.

I suggested this in another thread, but perhaps it wasn't widely read:
In order to address the paranoia about Ruby's licensing scheme perhaps
the Ruby Foundation (the soon-to-be non-profit Foundation for funding Ruby
projects) could hire an IP lawyer to look into Ruby's license scheme and
then either issue an opinion exonerating Ruby's license or issue an
opinion suggesting changes that might be needed. I suspect this would
be $1000 to $2000 well spent to dispense with the licensing FUD that
seems to be out there. Then when questions about Ruby license come up we
could point them to a web page that shows a letter from a Lawyer that
would (hopefully) ease people's fears. Or, if the Lawyer comes back with
some problem areas perhaps we could address them.

It's really too bad that we would have to spend money on something
like this, but perhaps we could even find a Lawyer affiliated with the EFF
or similar organization who would do the work pro-bono.

Phil
 
L

Lyle Johnson

I suggested this in another thread, but perhaps it wasn't widely read:
In order to address the paranoia about Ruby's licensing scheme perhaps
the Ruby Foundation (the soon-to-be non-profit Foundation for funding Ruby
projects) could hire an IP lawyer to look into Ruby's license scheme and
then either issue an opinion exonerating Ruby's license or issue an
opinion suggesting changes that might be needed. I suspect this would
be $1000 to $2000 well spent to dispense with the licensing FUD that
seems to be out there. Then when questions about Ruby license come up we
could point them to a web page that shows a letter from a Lawyer that
would (hopefully) ease people's fears. Or, if the Lawyer comes back with
some problem areas perhaps we could address them.

I don't have a problem with Ruby's license, but I've not yet been in
the position of needing to integrate it into commercial software.

But I guess my follow-up question, directed to those people do in fact
have fears about Ruby's license situation, is this: If Ruby Central
(http://www.rubycentral.org) did in fact have a letter from a lawyer
explaining how it's all good, would that matter to you? If not, what
would it take for you (or more likely your company's legal department)
to be happy? I wouldn't want Ruby Central to waste their funds on a
symbolic gesture that doesn't really solve the problem.
 
B

Ben Giddings

Phil said:
projects) could hire an IP lawyer to look into Ruby's license scheme and
then either issue an opinion exonerating Ruby's license or issue an
opinion suggesting changes that might be needed. I suspect this would

A lawyer licensed in what jurisdiction? Answering what question?

The problem is, a generic "Lawyer" can't say "it's all good". They can
only answer very specific questions for specific clients in the
jurisdiction in which they're licensed.

Having said that, it might help to have a FAQ type area where the
general ramifications of using Ruby code, etc. were answered in a
general way. This could at least get rid of the legal "red herrings"
like worrying about whether the license for the interpreter affects
programs written in Ruby.

What you could maybe do is pick a few very common scenarios like "I want
to build an obfuscating Ruby compiler" or "I want to include Ruby on the
CD with my FooBar Widget Set" or something. Then you could have a
lawyer find the relevant areas to look at. For example (very fake made
up example):

Situation: I want to build an obfuscating Ruby compiler

Important Questions:
* Will you be using enough of the Ruby source code that your project
will be considered a derivative work?
* Will you be doing a "clean room" re-implementation of the Ruby
interpreter?

General Analysis: If you write a compiler from scratch based on the
(currently nonexistant) Ruby language specification, you maintain full
copyright control over the compiler sources and can do with them what
you wish. If you use the Ruby sources as part of your compiler, you may
need to do X.

Ben
 
J

James Britt

Lyle said:
I don't have a problem with Ruby's license, but I've not yet been in
the position of needing to integrate it into commercial software.

But I guess my follow-up question, directed to those people do in fact
have fears about Ruby's license situation, is this: If Ruby Central
(http://www.rubycentral.org) did in fact have a letter from a lawyer
explaining how it's all good, would that matter to you? If not, what
would it take for you (or more likely your company's legal department)
to be happy? I wouldn't want Ruby Central to waste their funds on a
symbolic gesture that doesn't really solve the problem.


That makes sense. While an informed and educated statement about the
license would be good to have, it won't buy anyone legal indemnification
or peace of mind. Ultimately, a given company would have to get their
own lawyer to determine what to do.

James
 

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