Public Swikis

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at gate.net
Sat Dec 18 13:38:55 UTC 1999


Sorry I couldn't get back to you earlier, I am swamped getting ready 
for a trial.

I think you ought to have a lawyer (who knows something about 
internet law) take a look at this license.  You should be satisfied 
that you have bulletproofed yourself against unanticipated liability, 
and insured yourself against what you anticipated.  Issues that I 
noticed with a brief skim:

	1. Grant of a free license, but no clear termination 
provision.  You will want to make the free license terminable at 
will, or at least terminable on notice.

	2. Make compliance with a published acceptable use policy a 
condition of maintaining the license.  Prepare an acceptable use 
policy.  Your biggest concern here is third-party liability for IP 
violations that swiki content-makers are likely to make.

	3. Have a lawyer look at your policy and license, and the 
technology, to see if you can protect yourself from contributory 
infringement under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

I didn't carefully read the license, but only skimmed it.  I'll try 
to give it its due attention in the next few days.

----

So, our firm's IT department is *FINALLY* thinking about internets. 
I showed the guy your site, and the Squeak swiki, and he's been 
playing around with it somewhat.  His answer was along the lines of, 
"so what's the difference between this and giving each team member a 
copy of frontpage or some similar thing?"

Now that you are in the business of selling this stuff, how do you 
sell it (on features at least)?





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