NVD3 is back

sure, but what I mean is legally how does that policy need to be established? Does the CEO or board need to give individuals explicit authority to produce license agreements?

Some random googling brought up:

"Executing Corporate Contracts. Except as otherwise provided in the articles or in these bylaws, the board of directors by resolution may authorize any officer, officers, agent, or agents to enter into any contract or to execute any instrument in the name of and on behalf of the corporation." [1].

But does this apply to software licenses too? As a user of a software package is there any reasonable way for me to determine that the correct legal procedure has been followed. If the source has been out there under the GPL for 9 months, could they still revoke the license because it wasn't authorised? Or have they not done due diligence?

As a software engineer, what kind of authorisation should I be looking for? Does it need to come from upper management?

Those are the kind of issues that might have come up in a court case, and perhaps have been resolved to some degree (perhaps it's already been tested in a previous case, and I'm unaware of it).

[1] http://danashultz.com/blog/2010/06/28/who-can-sign-a-contrac...

From your own link: (b) Any contract or conveyance made in the name of a corporation which is authorized or ratified by the board, or is done within the scope of the authority, actual or apparent, conferred by the board or within the agency power of the officer executing it, except as the board's authority is limited by law other than this division, binds the corporation, and the corporation acquires rights thereunder, whether the contract is executed or wholly or in part executory.

Also 313. Subject to the provisions of subdivision (a) of Section 208, any note, mortgage, evidence of indebtedness, contract, share certificate, initial transaction statement or written statement, conveyance, or other instrument in writing, and any assignment or endorsement thereof, executed or entered into between any corporation and any other person, when signed by the chairman of the board, the president or any vice president and the secretary, any assistant secretary, the chief financial officer or any assistant treasurer of such corporation, is not invalidated as to the corporation by any lack of authority of the signing officers in the absence of actual knowledge on the part of the other person that the signing officers had no authority to execute the same.

Obviously that only applies to California, but the first sounds like you only have to verify that the person releasing to you appears to have the authority to do so; the second one specifically mentions vice presidents so it might be best to get a release from that level.

One wrinkle I'm aware of here in the UK is that you can't have a binding contract if one party receives no consideration for it. So you're on much firmer legal ground if you can arrange to pay $1 for your license.

IANAL

The numerical prefix repeats commands in vim, so '5gqq' means '5 times, format line'. The default format will wrap the text to an acceptable level, and 5 lines encompasses the 3 text lines plus the whitespace. The command 'gqq' here is a single one, you can read more with ':help gqq'.

8G moves to line 8, and =G is a command combined with a movement. The = command by default will remove any indentation on these lines, and the 'G' movement means 'to the end of the file'. This will remove the indentation from the 2nd and 3rd lines/paragraphs and the signature.

gg means 'move to top' and >G is another action/movement. > indents lines, and G means 'to the end', so this indents every line by one.

Hope that helps.

Thanks