boost vs. The Lawyers (non-technical)

From: Brian Neal (bneal_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-08 18:14:53

I hope this is appropriate for this mailing list...

I am a software engineer and our development team loves boost. However, I
can already see a coming battle with our company lawyers trying to convince
them to let us use boost in our software. We informally talked with one of
our software quality engineers. He said their major concern would be
assuring that we had permission to use the boost software. In other words,
how would we know that the boost developers had permission to release their
libraries so that anyone could use it? He also thought we would need
something in writing to this effect. Since their isn't any official boost
organization, I am getting scared already.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I would like to hear from
any boost developer or user who has experiences in dealing with this
nonsense.

1) How did you get your company lawyers off your backs and let you use
boost?

2) Should there be (is there?) a central boost license that all boost
libraries have that we can point our lawyers at, instead of going to each
and every boost developer to get permission to use his/her library?

3) What has been your experience in this situation?

Its ironic that something as wonderful as boost, which gives us so much
productivity (and that savings is passed along to our customers) could be
considered so dangerous by our lawyers.

Again, if this is not appropriate or has been rehashed to death I apologize.
If that is the case, please email me off list. I'll collect the responses
and give them to anyone who is interested.

Thanks,

Brian Neal