Linden Lab's collective copyright conundrum
by Tateru Nino 
Mar 22nd 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: News items, Opinion, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds
Over the last few months, there's been an increasing amount of talk about the modified Second Life viewer being used with Open Life Grid (a third-party virtual environment based on reverse-engineered and open-source systems and protocols). Most of the talk centers around copyright infringement -- or license violations, if you prefer.
It's claimed that the operators of Open Life Grid are failing to comply with the source-code licenses (the GPL with FLOSS exceptions) under which the Second Life source code has been made available. Now, while the issue has been reported to Linden Lab's license-infringement hotline, the issue is actually a bit trickier for the Lab than it would first appear.
You see, the viewer code contains contributions from a number of third-party contributors, each of which retains their copyright, intellectual property and rights to their contributions under the terms of the contribution agreement. All of whom have the right to commence their own actions.
Linden Lab does not (as a rule) discuss any legal or enforcement matter with any other party. However, as each contributor is a joint copyright holder who can take action of their own, the question is: Can the Lab afford not to discuss its plans and actions in this matter with its fellow copyright holders?
"Linden Lab will rarely, if ever, publicize legal disputes with third parties, since that tends to have a negative effect on any conversation intended to resolve the dispute," observes Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's 'Open Source Busybody', "So, please don't assume that lack of public action is the same as lack of action."
But signs on the SLDev mailing list and on other forums suggest that some contributors have interpreted the silence as unwarranted delay or lack of action on the Lab's part. And should any of them seek to take legal action of their own, the "effect on any conversation intended to resolve the dispute" cannot be predicted. The safe bet would seem to be for the Lab to communicate the status to its fellow copyright holders, as alien as that idea may seem.
Sure, Linden Lab has the contractual and legal right to take unilateral action for infringements in license terms, but it may well be that it no longer has the luxury to do so.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Frans Charming said on 6:35PM 3-22-2009
I just started to poke around after reading this.
There is source code posted here:
http://3dxviewer.com/download-source-code.aspx
Or is that some crippled version?
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Tateru Nino said on 10:45PM 3-22-2009
Hard to say, actually. There's more code there than there was when this piece was written, but I couldn't tell you at the moment if these sources are now current.
I am assured that they *weren't* but the situation seems to have changed suddenly.
(That's an interesting coincidence)
Frans Charming said on 2:00AM 3-23-2009
Yea, I'm hearing that this wasn't there earlier, and that it was back dated to look like it was.
Tateru Nino said on 2:39AM 3-23-2009
We're being told that the newly-available source does not appear to match the distributed binaries, though that is a preliminary finding, and we're waiting on a fuller determination.
Ann Otoole said on 7:22PM 3-22-2009
Enquiring minds want to know if the Open Source Everything Must Be Free Codeniks are going to have a tag team smack down in a chocolate pudding wrestling pit.
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Liberty Tesla said on 2:15PM 3-23-2009
Only if the pudding recipe is published under the GPL.
Doubledown Tandino said on 3:28AM 3-23-2009
regarding: "You see, the viewer code contains contributions from a number of third-party contributors, each of which retains their copyright, intellectual property and rights to their contributions under the terms of the contribution agreement. All of whom have the right to commence their own actions."
What makes this true?
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Tateru Nino said on 4:33AM 3-23-2009
Copyright law, the license under which the source code is made available and the terms of the contributors agreement.
Gwyneth Llewelyn said on 11:59PM 3-23-2009
Well, we lost the amazing Kirstens' Viewer from KirstenLee Cinquetti because of licensing issues. Hopefully that example will make the developers of Open Life Grid reconsider and deal with licensing issues in a respectful manner.
For now, I remain hopeful of Jacek's and McCabe's excellent effort at remaining fully compliant with *all* licensing issues with their Imprudence Project :) (http://imprudenceviewer.org/) And, well, it has been a pain dealing with that. A typical example: just replacing the fonts (the license does NOT allow GPL distribution) and the words "Second Life" (a LL tardemark) from *all* the source code, which took *weeks* — not to mention replacing the many non-GPL libraries from the code, namely, the JPEG2000 and the sound libraries. Not to mention a round of contacts with all patch contributors to have them agree to get their code applied to Imprudence's source — and fully acknowledge the contributions and even thanking each contributor individually, publicly, on the wiki for Imprudence. All that to get a fully free and open source version of SL to compile — before even starting to add a few patches and features!
It's NOT easy to be fully license-compliant, but I have never seen so much effort put into it as on the Imprudence viewer.
Sorry for the shameless plug :)
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