In comments to http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060925204515114 (FSF Responds to Misunderstandings about GPLv3)
------- Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, September 25 2006 @ 10:57 PM EDT I already actually replied to PJ in private (and in a separate email to her I promised that I would try to behave well, even if I do tend to find it hard to be too polite), but I might as well comment on this "FSF announcment" here too, since for once I'm on topic! I knew it had to happen evenually! Yee-haaw! Does anybody else think that the FSF is weasel-wording, when they now say that they don't restrict the "use" of the software. It's not a restriction on "use", when they say that you can't enforce a specific version of it. No, it's now about restricting "distributing it while controlling what you can do with the software". Yeah, and those deep-fried potato strips are really not "french fries", they're "freedom fries", so it's ok. Clinton, 1998: "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is" Bush, 2005: "it depends on what the definition of 'torture' is" FSF, 2006: "it depends on what the definition of 'use' is" Let the lawyerese word definition games begin! The rules are: the common meaning of the word has no actual relevance, the only thing that matters is if you can weasel yourself out of a tight spot. We are indeed not all lawyers, and as only a lawyer would tend to weasel out of things by trying to re-define what a common word like 'use' actually means, maybe that is just as well... (I also think that they are being very misleading when they say that they will respect the decision of anybody who wants to stay with the GPLv2. They say that now, but people reported to me that Eben Moglen was at least discussing ways of trying to change the kernel license against my wishes. Now that the main kernel developers showed some solidarity and they realize that it would look horribly stupid to even try, they suddenly "respect our decisions". Suu-ure.) We now return you to your scheduled off-topic discussions. Thank you for your patience. Linus ------- regards, alexander. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
