> I want to acknowledge the hard work across the organization, from software engineers to lawyers, to find a way to give back to the open source community and satisfy the concerns of both.
So it seems that this decision was done after careful legal advice was sought. I'd love to hear what the lawyers actually said about this "advisory." Does including an advisory remove liability on the code's creators, much like the "Contents may be hot" advisory removes liability on McDonalds should a customer burn themselves?
I asked a similar question in a comment on another link: if a coder were to open-source an app that could easily be repurposed as, say, a search engine for pirated videos, but they included an "advisory" saying exactly what a derivative work's creator should do to obey the law, is the original coder liable? It would seem that the DNC would say "no," but maybe voting law is different from copyright/piracy law when it comes to liability? But if anything, I'd expect voting law to be even stricter...
I'd hate to see a civil rights lawyer suing the DNC and invoking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_.... as a precedent. "This technology was primarily used for <strikeout>infringing</strikeout> disenfranchising uses."
o_o
(IANAL)