On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 07:31:10PM +0200, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
Falk Hueffner wrote:
the boost license (http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) does not allow redistributing modified versions. Is that intentional or an oversight?
I also thought that this is a bug. Boost's lawyer(s) got it right.
No "redistribution" permission needed. It's all in the 17 USC 109. ^^^^^^^^^^
After I figured out that USC stands for "United States Code" I looked it up at <URL:http://uscode.house.gov/usc.htm>, only to find that US lawmakers don't produce more comprehensible language than their German counterparts. I didn't see where this particular law covers Falk's question, but if the lawyers who drafted the Boost license say so, I won't argue... However, that brought another question to my mind: USC can only apply if at least one party of the license agreement is living or based in the US. (That's my layman's understanding, at least - IANAL) But is Boost a legal entity that can be party to a contract? Or do I in fact accept license agreements with the individual Boost contributors? If the latter holds and I use a Boost library contributed by someone living in Germany, then only German law applies, doesn't it? And if the library I use was contributed by someone living in Russia does then only Russian and / or German laws apply? Does anyone know whether this does or does not constitute a real problem? (A far fetched example: As I read the Boost license it denies _any_ liability, even in cases of gross negligence. I could imagine that a German court voids the disclaimer on the grounds that it is too broad. But then, I don't have any in depth knowledge about German liability laws.) Christoph -- http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/Mitarbeiter/cludwig.html LiDIA: http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/LiDIA/Welcome.html