Friday, March 25, 2005

More Issaries Fan Policy

The debate over the Issaries Fan Policy has so far been singularly unhelpful. I'll not go through the objections to the policy, but the arguments put forward by those who support it are, um, interesting :

"People should give Issaries the benefit of the doubt"

Over a legal document? Really?

"People should wait to see if there are any problems before complaining."

Might be fine for those who don't need to adopt the license. Unfortunately, I'm already being asked by Issaries to adopt the license for some of my work. I need to decide now whether to do so. Once I've done so, it will be too late to find clauses that cause me problems.

"The policy will stop litigation [that Issaries can't afford]"

Worryingly variants on this have come both from someone claiming to be a lawyer and someone at least semi-official. No legal document has any meaning unless backed by the courts. Stating publicly that Issaries can't afford litigation is tantamount to saying that they will not enforce the license. That seems extremely stupid, and I hope (and expect) is wrong.

"Issaries needs to protect its IP"

Yep, fine, true. No one has claimed otherwise. Comments like this really annoy me. Effectively it's saying "you aren't allowed to have an issue with one sentence in one section because something a little like the whole twelve page document is necessary". A childish straw man argument which pretty much shows those making it have no answer to your actual complaint.

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1 comments so far.

Kai [e] [w] wrote :

Sigh.

All I have to say is oh dear.

At the end of the day, like you've said, you have to adopt it, and MAY have problems with it. So it's whether it sits well with you as to where your objections are.

I got a giggle at the last one tho. That's a last resort, I've got nothing better to argue with...and of course newbies won't know better.

10:33 am, 25/03/2005