Questions like Can I change the caps to lowercase in licenses? and Do software patents for common formats (gif, mp3, h264) apply globally? are legal questions that impact open source software.
To what extent do we accept law questions?
Questions like Can I change the caps to lowercase in licenses? and Do software patents for common formats (gif, mp3, h264) apply globally? are legal questions that impact open source software.
To what extent do we accept law questions?
Open source (etc.) is a about copyright. It's about law. To some extent, we have to take law questions, or we can't really discuss FLOSS. But we also, I think, do not want to take law questions that aren't really specific to open source. General law questions should be directed to Law Beta.
I think we also shouldn't take questions that ask for legal advice such as very specific "am I following the license?" questions. Two reasons: (1) normally that's supposed to be asked to a lawyer, and might be considered practice of law; and (2) questions that specific aren't going to help any future visitors.
Specifically with the two questions I pointed out:
The shouting question is a general law one. It doesn't really have much to do with open source, almost all software licenses (including proprietary) read like that.
The patent one is also a general law question.
I think that we should accept them up to a level that can be discussed by referring to the explanatory materials for the licenses involved - the GNU GPL FAQ and the OSI FAQ come to mind.