On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 12:18 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote: > On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 11:11:40AM -0400, Matt McCutchen wrote: > > > (The one glaring exception to > > > this is the license of Liberation Fonts; consider that license > > > grandfathered in unless and until we can ever get that license > > > changed.) > > > > What is more galling to me in that case is that the license falsely > > refers to 1(b) as an exception, as if to make it seem more benign than > > it is. An exception is by definition an additional permission that > > distributors are allowed to remove (e.g., in order to combine the work > > with a plain-GPL work). > > This license was negotiated with the supplier company before I arrived > at Red Hat. I basically agree with your criticism - the only thing I > would take issue with is the suggestion of bad intent. The Red Hat > lawyer involved in negotiating this license had absolutely no > intention of using the term "exception" in some misleading way. There > was, I believe, a lack of adequate familiarity with the longstanding > traditional use of "exception" in GPL licensing culture, with the > traditional distinction between additional permissions and additional > restrictions, and with the non-normativeness of tacking on > noncustomary additional restrictions to the GPL.
I'm glad to hear that no deception was intended. On a related note, the Licensing:Main entries for GPL versions with exceptions currently state, "Please be sure that any exceptions are approved by emailing them to [email protected] first." But true exceptions are never problematic, so more to the point would be, "Please be sure that any terms described as exceptions are really exceptions by emailing them to [email protected] first." -- Matt _______________________________________________ legal mailing list [email protected] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
