From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3249 invoked by alias); 24 Nov 2004 01:03:27 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 3198 invoked from network); 24 Nov 2004 01:03:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO boden.synopsys.com) (198.182.44.79) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 24 Nov 2004 01:03:22 -0000 Received: from maiden.synopsys.com (maiden.synopsys.com [146.225.100.170]) by boden.synopsys.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 46164DF8E; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:02:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from piper.synopsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by maiden.synopsys.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA09329; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:03:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jbuck@localhost) by piper.synopsys.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id iAO13Lb28030; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:03:21 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: piper.synopsys.com: jbuck set sender to Joe.Buck@synopsys.com using -f Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:09:00 -0000 From: Joe Buck To: Daniel Berlin Cc: Mike Stump , Biagio Lucini , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, gomp@nongnu.org, gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: OpenMP licensing problem: a solution Message-ID: <20041123170320.A27093@synopsys.com> References: <200411230916.36569.lucini@phys.ethz.ch> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: ; from dberlin@dberlin.org on Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 07:47:43PM -0500 X-SW-Source: 2004-11/txt/msg00873.txt.bz2 On Tue, 23 Nov 2004, Mike Stump wrote: > > Also, > > bear in mind, what the person says has no legal weight, if they person you > > are talking to has no legal standing. > > It's never a good idea to make assumptions about what principles the law > follows :). On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 07:47:43PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote: > In this case, what you've said isn't necessarily or even usually true. > Take a gander at the law of agency, in particular the principle of > "apparent authority" (and also the principles of various forms > of estoppel). Of course, you'd end up in court in this case, which you'd > want to avoid, but you don't get to hold yourself out and give legal > answers on behalf of your employer without any consequences :). "estoppel", as I understand it, means that the court won't find you guilty if you rely on a promise that you had good reason to think was a valid promise (for example, because someone claiming to speak for a company made it to you). I have no idea, though, what "good reason" means in this case. Red Hat recently put out a piece explaining that the estoppel principle would keep a future evil Red Hat management from suing free software developers for infringing on Red Hat's patents, because the developers are relying on an official promise: http://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/features/patents/ http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html Still, estoppel is an Anglo/American concept, and might not be good elsewhere.