[snip]
If someone believes that they are contributing software to a GPL'd software project, and does not realize that the nature of your disclaimer allows Digium to release their changes under a non-GPL'd license, then that is breaking with the spirit of the GPL.
If that is true, then the GPL is not comprehensive enough to cover its own "spirit", so what you are saying is that the GPL implementation is fundamentally flawed.
If one can break the "spirit" of it without breaking it, then something is missing from it that should have there.
On the other hand, if you are injecting some supernatural "spirit" (and purposely using that word to conjure imagery of the imaginary intangible qualities that can never be written on paper) of your own into what the GPL actually is, then the GPL is fine as written, which I suspect is the case. The GPL is what it
says, and its spirit comes from what it says, and there is no way that anyone can break its spirit as such.
Unless you are now claiming to be the author of the GPL, you should stop trying to be an expert on its "spirit". The only ones qualified to do so are John Stallman and his attorneys, misguided though they may be.
Yet no matter how much I don't care for the GPL, I find myself believing contributors who don't fully understand the disclaimer merely to be naive, but Digium looking a bit unscrupulous in this regard.
Butter him up and then call him unscrupulous in a later paragraph. Beautifully manipulative.
That obviously won't fix the "moral standing" problem that the FSF would
Your own use of quotes here suggests something interesting. I'll leave it to the reader to discover what.
-- Tom
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