[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] [IAEP] MOTION: French visa for Samson Goddy to attend 10-year Anniversary Scratch Conf / 50-year Anniversary of Logo

[D. Joe]

On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 07:06:06AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:

> It must be a sign of a mature organization that it has so much time to
> devote to this.

Dealing with the strictures of the law and of various agreements is not, as
you might cast it, some luxury that we are indulging in.

This is one of the more frustrating things for me in this type of
discussion, running up against the attitude that the challenges of
copyrights and licenses are somehow created by, or somehow the fault of,
those of us who usually are just trying to navigate them as freely as we
can, trying to make sure that our collaborative peers, and that those
downstream of us, get the same freedom.

FOSS advocates didn't create copyright, and we certainly didn't create the
situation where copyright restrictions attach to a work AUTOMATICALLY at the
time of its creation.[1] Since these restrictions arise automatically, the
need to have a license to use the works legally (in most cases) also arises
automatically. 

Fortunately, as constraining as the situation is, its basics are also pretty
clear, so once someone's unfamiliarity is revealed, it can be addressed.

tl;dr: I'm sorry you're just now learning how horrible the default situation
is, but now that you know, I hope you can continue to work to make it less
horrible. One way you can do that is by refraining from comments like those
quoted above.

[1] in the US since it became party to the Berne convention on copyright in
    1988 (effective 1989)

-- 
D. Joe