One point about licences is that they are statements of intent from the authors. The GPL probably has lots of lawyerly holes in it, but people go out of their way to respect the intentions of it. Hence you get all sorts of careful analysis of whether this piece of software can be 'bound' with it, and in what way. However, the intentions one particular commentator vary depending on whether the cause of Free Software is promoted or not. Unfortunately, while this seems like a good objective, it actually undermines one basis on which people like to operate, objectivity and reasonableness of meaning, irrespective of viewpoint. I think most people take a reasonable stand on the meaning, with liberal interpretations. Of course there are numerous other interpretations, but if the people giving 'the blessing' on this licence also were liberal with interpretations, then there wouldn't be a degree of nervousness. Everyone would code happily and only when there were gross violations would the only real power that this licence has, the power of moral condemnation, be invoked. Moral condemnation is a force best stored up for when it is really needed. Crying wolf at shadows is not a good idea. World domination is a joke phrase. The whole point is that domination with the GPL is impossible. Maybe world subversion :) If you look at the wording of the GPL, there are a lot of playful jokes : copyleft, Ty Coon. I feel that everyone should view things in that original, jokey, light. Jamie -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
