Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 0:29 UTC (Sat) by npws (subscriber, #168248)
In reply to: Companies are made of humans by SLi
Parent article: Two approaches to tightening restrictions on loadable modules

The repeatedly raised suggestions of "ask your company lawyer" was slightly irritating to me as well. This is obviously a small company, and at least in Europe, these companies usually don't have a "company lawyer". Sure, they can go find one and pay him, but that a) takes time and b) a lot of lawyers are just completely unqualified to answer these questions properly, yet they'll happily claim otherwise. This is not meant to be an excuse for this company, I just think people should consider that not the entire world runs on lawyers as apparently the U.S. does. On top of that, this does look like a rather simple issue that could easily be resolved without any lawyers at all.

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 2:26 UTC (Sat) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, seeing that they had decided to play silly buggers with license choice (and I *still* hadn't seen any coherent explanation of what exactly had they been trying to achieve)... I'd expect that at some point they must have done some due diligence to figure out the implications of that choice. Regardless of the specific licenses being involved. For something commonly done a long list of other companies doing exact same thing would suffice, but that's not exactly common, is it?

Pulling stunts in that area _without_ a good legal help... ouch. Darwin Award material, that.

I'm not talking about the guy who'd ended up buried under that mess and probably cursing any number of people and PHBs right now. Mess is not of his making, and it's entirely possible that he'd assumed that whoever made the decision back then must've checked what they were doing. Always a bad assumption, but... I can see how _not_ asking for details could've been very tempting.

I *do* wonder what the original rationale had been - if nothing else, it promises not a small amount of schadenfreude towards the "spirit of GPLv3" True Believers.

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 14:23 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> I'd expect that at some point they must have done some due diligence to figure out the implications of that choice.

I'd not expect that at all. My experience is that questions about open source licensing leads to lots of blank stares when you ask the legal department, assuming you even have one. They specialise in contract law, that's their daily job. Generally there's one or two employees who think open source licensing is important enough and eventually it lands on the desk of the owner/founder (it's a privately owned company after all) and they make a business decision based on the perceived risks.

Would any of this reasoning be documented? Unlikely, it eventually becomes lost in the mists of time. Does that mean mistakes happen? Of course. Running a business means making mistakes. Does that mean we should send the rampaging hordes at any company for any mistake? No, because sometimes it's just an honest mistake and in much of the world, honest mistakes are not overly punished as long as you take steps to correct them. Which from what I see they are doing.

Entrepreneurs are used to taking decisions based on incomplete information. Lawyers are expensive, so you don't want to engage them for small fry.

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 25, 2024 10:49 UTC (Mon) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Putting aside the problem of money, talking to a lawyer means that in the best case you'll have to put on hold whatever you're doing for several months at the very least, or a year or more probably, because they are that slow.

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 19:01 UTC (Sat) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (4 responses)

The reason that people say this is that, in at least some jurisdictions, it is actually illegal for us to directly advise them on issues of law. You have to be a lawyer to do that, and more importantly, you have to be *their* lawyer. If you're not a lawyer, it's unlicensed practice of law, and if you're a lawyer but not their lawyer, then it is more complicated but still very problematic.

(Hypothetical and general discussion of law does not count - it's only legal advice when you apply the law to a specific factual scenario that actually exists, recommend some course of action in response to those facts, and do so in a way that the recipient of the advice would reasonably understand as applicable to them in particular. While "you should talk to a lawyer" might be construed as advice, it is very general and fact-independent, and more importantly, the whole point of licensing is to encourage people to get advice from lawyers instead of laypeople, so it is very much in the spirit of the restriction to tell them that explicitly.)

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 20:45 UTC (Sat) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link] (3 responses)

I would hope that the purpose of licensing would be to make things run smoothly and fairly (in the open source world), not to enrich lawyers...

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 16, 2024 22:24 UTC (Sat) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #71063) [Link] (2 responses)

i think he was referring to licensing as in "a license to practice law", given the context of the rest of his message...

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 17, 2024 0:17 UTC (Sun) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link] (1 responses)

Ah, that probably... makes sense! Although I must also say I'm not a big fan of the idea of "laypeople should not try to interpret law". That already presumes a legal system so complex that it should be replaced. Of course there are difficult cases, but from a European POV it seems outright silly that people other than the immediate parties shouldn't be able to try to figure out who is, say, responsible for a car accident without lawyers being involved (and most such incidents, I believe, are resolved without lawyers).

I also think that in most of those jurisdictions the rule is more like you're not allowed to 1) present yourself as qualified in law; 2) provide legal opinions for compensation (albeit I'm actually not sure if this applies in all contexts; I think a company may be allowed to hire someone who it believes is familiar with an area of the law to work on that stuff); 3) represent others.

Companies are made of humans

Posted Nov 17, 2024 12:16 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> 1) present yourself as qualified in law;

And rather importantly, what does that mean? In the UK people who are NOT lawyers - who have no formal qualifications IN LAW - are also required by law to present legal opinions. In particular to LARGE corporations!

Okay, they are required to be formally qualified, and that qualification will almost certainly include the law as a required minor, but they are neither qualified nor licenced to practice law.

In the UK at least, all associations are supposed to include, as part of their governing structure, a Secretary. Above a certain size, these people have to be formally qualified, be it as a Secretary, Accountant, Lawyer or whatever. And these people are the ones held liable for the lawful behaviour of the company! As a Company Secretary, you are the person legally liable for the misbehaviour of the company you represent, and you could go to jail for it! Highly unlikely, but it's in the Statutes.

Cheers,
Wol