Dear Alexander,
I just wanted to compose a little note thanking you for your
recent work. You've clarified a few licensing questions that I've
had by getting me thinking and providing the best-ever examples of
the most important details. In reference to the GemRB project
and it's separate-but-associated-installer, I was troubled, as
both the project and its installer are distributed together, but
will soon be under different versions of the GPL. Thus, two
licenses would exist across a single project. Fortunately, you
provided the most eloquent guidance to the situation's solution
with your incessant nattering about the interpretation of "mere
aggregation" and "interpretation". Best I could understand, you
were arguing that the "mere aggregation" clause requires all
co-distributed software to be under a single version GPL if any of
it is under the GPL. Then an idea occurred to me: to clarify the
situation, why not look at precedent? Not the precedent of the
courts of which there is very little precedent (for better or
worse) to go on. No, instead, look at the precedent of history
itself. If your interpretation of "aggregation" were correct, the
Debian project would've been sued out of existence over a decade
ago by Richard Stallman himself or it wouldn't distribute any
GPLed software as the GPL would contradict their `Debian Free
Software Guidelines`_ (number 9). Obviously, neither of these
situations is true so the "mere aggregation" clause, as otherwise
pointed out, must apply only to "derivative works" as defined by
the FSF. .. _`Debian Free Software Guidelines`:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
I wondered about that for a few days; why your argument would shed
so much light on the situation. Then another idea occurred to me:
why you focus on the interpretation of "interpretation" itself.
You have a rather unusual argument style - you have a fantastic
desire to quote other authorities in your arguments. Some of your
posts are literally nothing more than other's articles, but that
strategy underlies your method of argument. You quote anyone's
opinion as long as they agree with your position, whether or not
they're actually qualified and positioned to make the decisions.
Interpretation, as you make abundantly clear, is important because
interpretation differs. However, an interpretation matters only
when it's the interpretation of someone actually in a position of
power to make a decision in the first place. It's like saying
elections are decided by pundits instead of the people. It's
similar to the truth, but still wrong in essence and example.
Finally, thanks for pointing out the Moglen presentation, that was
an interesting listen. So, basically, Alexander, thank you.
Thank you for pointing out the flaws in your arguments by
precedent and counterexample and by furthering the purpose of all
those annoying acronyms that protect the creative freedoms of the
downstream software user. Seriously, if your effort was to
strengthen the philosophical basis and position of the GPL, you've
done a great job. You're a really cool undercover GNU agent.
Thanks! Nick --
GPG: 0x4C682009 | 084E D805 31D8 5391 1D27 0DE1 9780 FD4D 4C68
2009
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