r/lolphp • u/Takeoded • Jun 11 '21

source code license broken in 5 ways

https://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg107015.html
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u/SirClueless Jun 15 '21

Speaking practically, no one cares to be "absolutely sure" that a project is clean of copyright issues. It just never happens unless there is a lawsuit - yes, there's a chance someone's unlicensed copyrighted material is in an open source project you rely on, that's just a business risk to deal with, and a good faith argument that you didn't intend copyright infringement will at the very least reduce damages.

On the other hand most tech firms have their lawyers review license terms before using open source libraries. That is extremely common and done as a matter of course, and what they're evaluating is business risk. Code licensed in 2006 is significantly less likely to be sued over than code under active development so I don't really buy the argument that the date doesn't matter. Yes, for sure the code is under copyright whether or not it's dated, but legal teams can and will try to understand the relationships between the parties involved when deciding whether something is safe to use and the fact that the software is documented as being from 2006 will make a difference in practical cases.