Adam McKenna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm in disbelief that people participating on a board called > "debian-legal" would take one sentence from a license, read it without > considering the context or any of the the other text in the license, > and declare it non-free. > > Do you think that this is how courts work in real life?
I think there's very good reason for d-l's typically pessimistic evaluation of licenses. J. Random Hacker is at a distinct disadvantage in our legal system (U.S., in my case) with respect to just about anyone who might file a suit. We're not really worried about cases where the copyright holder is friendly and reasonable, obviously. We're concerned about cases where that's not the case. And one thing that should be clear to anyone is that even the best of circumstances can turn sour and antagonistic given the right sequence of events. So when evaluating a license we assume the worst: evil, nasty, duplicitous copyright holders who have a personal vendetta against anyone and everyone. Thankfully, that's not the typical case, by a long shot. But there are enough cases that come close to merit such pessimism when reading licenses. In an ideal world, you'd be right that the reasonable version would always win. Bad guys would always wear black hats so we can identify them, and they'd always lose. But that's not the real world. The GFDL, in my strong opinion, offers much more than the average amount of ambiguity and risk for potential licensees. Most of it doesn't represent a real difference of opinion, I think, but it's there nonetheless. What's more, we've had an extremely hard time getting clarification from the FSF on these issues. No doubt we bear a portion of the blame for this: personality conflicts, etc., etc.; I'm sure you know the drill. But the fact remains that we absolutely do *not* have clarification, despite multiple attempts to get it. Maybe your opinion on what constitutes a "reasonable" interpretation of the GFDL matches that of the FSF. Maybe no user of Debian software is ever going to have an opinion on what constitutes "reasonable" that doesn't match the FSF. Maybe no other copyright holder who uses the GFDL is going to have a different opinion on what constitutes "reasonable". All this despite a whopping lot of ambiguity in the simple text of the license, and despite d-l's abundance of experience with very odd interpretations even of language we thought was self-evident (UW, anyone?). Maybe. But that's an awful lot of maybes, and my opinion is that the odds are considerably less than 50% on each and every one of them. That's why I think the GR was, frankly, _stupid_. Crucially, I think it's a violation of the trust that Debian's users have in us. But all that's just my opinion. And I'm not even a DD, so I don't get a vote. And I didn't even participate in the discussion leading up to the vote because, frankly, I'm sick and tired of the issue and it never occurred to me it would turn out as it did. I'm ready to move on and forget about the GFDL. But your comment above isn't really about the GFDL at all, but about how d-l interprets licenses. -- Jeremy Hankins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]