Re: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Re: [HACKERS] proposed improvements to PostgreSQL license

Simon Brooke wrote:

> Ned Lilly wrote:
> >
> > > Two states have adopted UCITA - Virginia and Maryland. Maryland has
> > > an October 1, 2000, effective date, but requires that its laws will
> > > only apply if there is a reasonable connection with the state.
> > > Virginia has an effective date of July 1, 2001, but does not require
> > > a connection with the state and thereby gives somewhat greater
> > > assurance that UCITA will apply to all Postgres-related dealings,
> > > wherever they occur.
>
> Not here in Scotland, they won't. If people in the United States feel
> that United States law prevents them contributing to Open Source
> projects, that is a local problem which should be addressed locally - by
> lobbying their representatives to change the law.

Lobbying is an art of influencing representatives to cater for someone
else's needs. This is how the UCITA proposal emerged in the first
pace: through an extensive lobbying by those badly reputed industries
who started losing in the marketplace to open source/free software, or
became apprehensive of the possibility of such losses. Aside from the
money and other forces involved in lobbying, the reasoning in support
of UCITA has a lot of brainwashing potential: why should one allow
free software to exist at all, let alone without liability by default,
in the same time when the free health care, free police and free money
market are banned from existence. This is, I guess, the kind of
uniformity sought by the UCITA -- what else does that "U" stand for?

With that said, how likely do you think is that all software
developers of Maryland together, even backed up by all law professors
and practicing lawyers, will be able to overturn the decision to adopt
UCITA by simply annoying their representatives? Considering that most
lawmakers and lobbyists of the World live in a 20-mile wide area in
Virginia and Maryland centered around the U.S. Capitol, and that the
economy of these states depends on the lobbying industry more than
Jamaica on tourism, I wouldn't bet my lunch.

BTW, I don't think that UCITA has terribly good chances of becoming
the United States law. While many states are still evaluating the
proposal, a few others including Illinois, where I happen to live,
have declined to even consider it for evaluation.

Now picture this: in a not so distant future you visit a web site
whose title page says:

"Residents of Europe, Canada, Illinois and other free countries,
please go ahead. Residents of Virginia and Maryland, please kindly
follow <a>this link<a>. Your local law requires us to harass you some
more before you can download. Avoiding this harassment by making an
inappropriate selection voids our responsibility.

How's that as an alternative to a pop-up license statement?

I wonder what Dilbert has to say about this.

--Gene