Agreement with ICQ

[Evan Schoenberg, M.D.]

On May 21, 2011, at 9:05 AM, Ivan Komarov wrote:

>> Agreed. I don't think _any_ of these limitations can be imposed on
>> Pidgin/libpurple.
> 
> Good point. I expressed our concerns to them (for the record, by
> "them" I mean Andrey Krylov, ICQ Marketing Manager in Russia:
> http://ru.linkedin.com/pub/andrey-krylov/31/937/2b8). They agree these
> limitations are impossible to impose on an open-source product, but
> this is the standard agreement which can't be changed. On the other
> hand, Andrey said the agreement is a pure formality and they don't
> really care about whether we satisfy these provisions or not. He
> confirmed we don't have to change *any* code in libpurple/Pidgin, all
> we have to do is sign the agreement.


That's not how contact work.  You don't sign an agreement, the provisions of which are unacceptable, based on a verbal agreement that the "contact is just a formality; it's okay if you violate it."

Under no circumstance should this agreement be signed.  If they don't care about whether we satisfy these provisions or not, they should provide us with a new contract themselves, or we should mark out the unacceptable provisions, initial the changes, and send it back to them for review.

-Evan

> 
> I admit it sounds weird, but, as far as I understand, the worst that
> can happen after we sign it is that ICQ orders us to remove the ICQ
> support from libpurple (which they can do in any case). IANAL, though,
> and I think we really should talk to our lawyers (if we have any, that
> is :)) before we do anything.
> 
> -- 
> Иван Комаров (Ivan Komarov)
> 
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