So in another thread a technical question on how to put a legal notice on a website was asked:
I suggested the response which was licensing advice was OT. I didn’t want to continue that discussion there since it is OT for that thread.
If someone had asked how do I put an clear disclaimer on pages that are about stories involving legal matters that clearly marks it as ‘these allegations have not yet been tried in a court of law’, the question probably would have either been answered (if Hugo specific in the way asked) or as OT if a general HTML / CSS / web question.
Somehow when it involves licensing of web components this attitude changes.
I would suggest that the appropriate response would have been a little less definitive ‘free advice’ “You don’t need to do that”, to 'You probably won’t get many answers because most people don’t think it is legally required" possibly with a link to a discussion of open source licenses.
The latter is about managing the forum, the former is actually dispensing legal advice (explaining a legal matter is giving legal advice, it’s just one of those grey areas that happens a lot) or at least a political opinion about how the license works, IMO. As such I’d suggest avoiding it.
I guess the question is, how much does this come up, and to avoid long discussions on unrelated posts, what’s the best way to handle it? (Or am I the first one to point this out?)