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Furthermore, there is no license you are going to find that addresses 100% of all possible potential legal offenses worldwide. There is always going to be some risk of violation somewhere under someone's jurisdiction. This is irrelevant.
The only jurisdictions that matter are those of the copyright holders and OHM. Even if something my project does is a violation of CRIMINAL law in Cobrastan it does not mean I have to worry about being dragged to Cobrastan to face trial. Cobrastan does not have jurisdiction here, and doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US.
On top of that, copyright law is CIVIL law and not CRIMINAL law. The Cobrastani government can't prosecute me, a citizen who is a rightsholder has to sue me in Cobrastani court. Even if a rightsholder sues you in Cobrastani court and wins, they can't collect from you unless you own assets in Cobrastan that can be seized.
Let's say for the sake of argument there IS a magical license called the Fairy Land Unicorn License that does absolve me of 100% of copyright risk. There's still plenty of other things I could potentially be sued for:
1) Patent infringement - Using a patented technique or method somewhere in my project
2) Trademark infringement - Using a trademarked property somewhere in my project
3) Copyright violation - If my code is similar enough to someone else's code they can allege I copied it when i didn't and sue me anyway
4) I'm sure there's more. There's always some jurisdiction somewhere that has something that can be used to sue me for the sufficiently motivated.
There is nothing you can do that will absolutely protect you from legal risk other than simply never create your addon in the first place. Even if you create and never distribute an addon, just keep it privately on your computer, you can still be sued for these things.
---------- Post added at 10:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:53 PM ----------
And that's an explicit assignment of the right as I described. Not every license does this. The GPL is not the only license that doesn't. It has to be done as a separate and explicitly stated action, as the MIT license does it.
The only jurisdictions that matter are those of the copyright holders and OHM. Even if something my project does is a violation of CRIMINAL law in Cobrastan it does not mean I have to worry about being dragged to Cobrastan to face trial. Cobrastan does not have jurisdiction here, and doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US.
On top of that, copyright law is CIVIL law and not CRIMINAL law. The Cobrastani government can't prosecute me, a citizen who is a rightsholder has to sue me in Cobrastani court. Even if a rightsholder sues you in Cobrastani court and wins, they can't collect from you unless you own assets in Cobrastan that can be seized.
Let's say for the sake of argument there IS a magical license called the Fairy Land Unicorn License that does absolve me of 100% of copyright risk. There's still plenty of other things I could potentially be sued for:
1) Patent infringement - Using a patented technique or method somewhere in my project
2) Trademark infringement - Using a trademarked property somewhere in my project
3) Copyright violation - If my code is similar enough to someone else's code they can allege I copied it when i didn't and sue me anyway
4) I'm sure there's more. There's always some jurisdiction somewhere that has something that can be used to sue me for the sufficiently motivated.
There is nothing you can do that will absolutely protect you from legal risk other than simply never create your addon in the first place. Even if you create and never distribute an addon, just keep it privately on your computer, you can still be sued for these things.
---------- Post added at 10:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:53 PM ----------
The MIT license explicitly grants sublicensing rights
And that's an explicit assignment of the right as I described. Not every license does this. The GPL is not the only license that doesn't. It has to be done as a separate and explicitly stated action, as the MIT license does it.