[TheLastPass]

Unrelated to the point of the article, but since we're discussing lawyers and their knowledge of coding in a Silicon Valley audience: has anyone else noticed that many of the lawyers who specialize in software licensing actually have a very shallow understanding of common open-source licenses? I think I've worked with at least 3 firms now at my current employer, a medium-size (>2000 person) software company. When I've had meetings with them about compliance with open-source licenses, they seem to be unaware of really basic aspects of the licenses. I've had one that thought the ASL 2.0 left you wide-open to patent trolls because you gave up all of your patent rights. I've had another that thought we could simply stop redistributing GPL software and have no further obligation to provide a way to get our modifications to the source. Especially for someone who went to law school, it seems as thought most of the lawyers I've worked with haven't read the license text, but simply heard this and that about the licenses. Is this common among Silicon Valley lawyers, or have I just had bad lawyers? I'm sure there's a lot more to law in Silicon Valley than this, but this is even with the person they refer me to for open source license questions.

[james_in_the_uk]

Not excusing shoddy lawyering but here are some thoughts:

1.Many of these lawyers probably don't actually specialise in open source. Especially if they work for companies as project or product lawyers. They've probably been allocated it as part of their remit, along with issues like contract and data privacy.

2. Open source is a niche within a niche (IP law). It requires a nuanced understanding of copyright and patent law but also requires strong understanding of software development practices. Concepts like GPL linking are really tricky to grok even if you are a knowledgeable IP lawyer.

3. Several popular open source licenses weren't written by lawyers and so can be a little ambiguous when read against the relevant jurisprudence. Most are not well tested in court and so it's hard to give definitive advice on how they work.