Corporate legal department reaction to Boost license

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-11-13 12:14:39

I've been having a private email exchange with a corporation that is 
planning to use Boost internally.  The developers involved asked their 
corporate legal department to give the OK.  While the current Boost license 
situation isn't a showstopper, the legal eagles were uncomfortable with 
having to look at many licenses rather than just one license.  Here is a 
comment from a developer, and my response.

 >My impression is that if boost had a central license for all the
 >libraries, the legal department would be much happier.

I can understand that.

 > This may be something boost should consider.

We've talked about it in the past.  The issues that blocked us included:

*  We felt if we did that then a lawyer should write the license, and with 
no budget and no legal volunteers that was a stumbling block.

*  We have developers contributing from multiple countries, and that 
confused us as to how international law might affect licenses.  Current 
libraries have been contributed by developers from at least the US, UK, 
Germany, Bulgaria, and Finland, and I've probably missed a few.

*  While most Boost developers contribute libraries in their own name, some 
are contributed by universities and corporations.  Those entities often 
have their own lawyers, who may want to have a say in license wording.

All that being said, we probably should reconsider the issue.  I'll post a 
copy of my comments above on the Boost list to see what people think.

Boosters, is it time to reopen this issue?

--Beman