Re: ActiveState seeking Lua community feedback

[Russell Haley <russ.haley@...>]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 3:37 AM, Ahmed Charles <acharles@outlook.com> wrote:
> On 11/3/2016 10:21 AM, Russell Haley wrote:
>> I don't think there was any emotional charge there? Everyone who wants
>> your MIT licensed software portrayed as a legal risk please contact me
>> and I will retract my statement.
>>
>> Russ
>
> If you've ever had to deal with copyright lawyers at large companies,
> you'll know that all third party software has legal risk, whatever the
> license is, unless you have been indemnified of that risk. If that
> wasn't clear to you before, I'd encourage you to either do research or
> engage a lawyer about it. It's entirely a non-trivial topic that you are
> attempting to trivialize.
>
> Note, I'm not suggesting that the MIT license has an issue or that Lua
> specifically has an issue, but the law is a complex space and you can
> never simply state that something has no risk.

So for starters, I retract my original statement. I was hoping to wave
the MIT License flag against FUD, but the outcome has been much
different.

Thank you Ahmed for the correction. You're absolutely right as they
provide indemnity services for OEM licensing and this statement is
specifically in the section outlining OEM Re-distribution licenses
(perhaps Jeff could have chimmed in on Thursday about this? lolz).
Limiting liability in software is not a trivial matter. I wrote an
entire email agreeing with you but then read their statement again:

>From http://www.activestate.com/lua ->

TURN-KEY LUA REDISTRIBUTION RIGHTS

"...ActiveLua OEM Edition takes the complexity out of open source
licensing by guaranteeing assurance and eliminating legal risk that
goes along with distributing Lua in commercial applications."

In the above mentioned statement "and" implies that the action of
eliminating legal risk is directly related to the subject of open
source licensing (correct me if I am wrong). If either " takes the
complexity out of open source licensing by guaranteeing assurance" or
"...eliminating legal risk that goes along with distributing Lua in
commercial applications" was in it's own sentence I would agree with
Ahmed. If they spelled out that external liability is mitigated due to
indemnification services, I would agree with Ahmed. However, the
statement implies a direct correlation between open source licensing,
legal risk, and distributing Lua. It is my personal opinion that
ActiveState had either unknowingly or willfully mischaracterized Lua
and MIT licensed software as carrying "legal risk" similar to that of
GPL licensed software through implying all open source software
carries the same license characteristics.

So, let me try this again:

Due to the broad (but not complete) use of permissive licensing on the
vast majority of libraries available from the Lua community, I would
like to see ActiveState separate the two phrases in the above
statement and specify what legal risk is eliminated through OEM
licenses, or to clarify the permissiveness of Lua licensing.  More to
my very original point, I think they should specify use of permissive
licensing within Lua as it is - in my opinion - a strong case for why
to use Lua over other languages.

And for the record, I have no problem being corrected. I simply wanted
to point out where I think they are being disingenuous[1] (apparently
I'm the only one not okay with that).

[1] From  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disingenuous

Disingenuous -
1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating:
"Increasingly, the question of immigration has become adisingenuous
stalking-horse for race and racial hostility" (Tyler Stovall).
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Usage Problem Unaware or uninformed; naive.

These expressions and opinions are my own and should not be associated
with others on the Lua Mailint list. I have no further comment on the
subject.

Thanks!
Russ