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

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Sat Feb 23 23:10:02 UTC 2013


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



More information about the copyleft-next mailing list