On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 05:48:50PM -0500, Pamela Chestek wrote:
The complication for the GPL is that by some point that I assume
took
place before 1995, FSF-copyrighted software came to represent a
minority of all the GPL-licensed software in the universe by any
reasonable metric, and the FSF's copyright share of the GPL pie has
only decreased further over time. (The FSF regarded this as a sign of
great success, it should be noted.)
I recognized this, but it also seemed to me that the FSF interpretation was the
most restrictive, so if I abided by its interpretation I was probably on safe
ground.
Ah, yes, I suppose I've said something similar to this. I've talked
about how, back when the FSF (and/or RMS) was more actively involved
in GPL interpretation, the FSF/RMS view was valuable in establishing a
reasonable-enough (some of course would disagree with that)
interpretive outer bound.
[...]
For this case, then, I think it would be useful to point out that the
FAQs are
meant to be relied upon for this interpretative function, something along the
lines of "to interpret this document, look at the FAQs which explain what we
were trying to accomplish." This documents that they indeed have weight that
should be considered in the interpretation. But you only get there if the
language itself isn't clear and you're allowed to consider extrinsic evidence,
in which case the FAQs would probably be considered fairly illuminating whether
you had mentioned them or not. So is it worth the word count?
Probably not.
- RF