[copyleft-next] HBR cure 2013-02-18

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Sat Feb 23 20:50:14 UTC 2013


On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 09:26:01AM -0500, Pamela Chestek wrote:
 
> When I was on the proprietary side of the house I just assumed (without
> agreeing) that the FAQs were the proper interpretation. It was like my neighbor
> who thought the property line was in a different place than what we thought; if
> I just observed his boundary line he wouldn't come out on his porch when he was
> drunk and yell at me for crossing it, and I would tolerate him coming around
> the fence and mowing the skinny little strip of grass between the fence and our
> driveway.  And I suppose ultimately someday he would adversely possess that
> little plot of land, which is the point of the FAQs....

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.)

Assume for sake of argument that a FAQ comes into existence. What do
you think of the license explicitly referencing it in a way that
promotes its authoritativeness? 

 - RF



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