Re: Implied exceptions to GPL?

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>

> 2. If you wrote and released the program under the GPL, and you designed
> it specifically to work with those facilities, people can take that as
> an implicit exception permitting them to link it with those facilities.
> But if that is what you intend, it is better to say so explicitly.

> Point 2 says you can take someone else's code and implicit permission
> exists that you can link it with required 3rd party libraries, even if
> they are not GPL compatible (at least that is the way I read it: "people
> can take that is an implicit exception").

I think (as a non-native speaker) that the word "can" is sligtly
ambigous in English - it may either mean "is allowed to" or "is able
to". In this context I think the intended meaning is "if you do
so-and-so, it is likely that people will that it as an implicit
permission, irrespective of whether their reasoning holds water in a
legal sense".

-- 
Henning Makholm                          "Hell, every other article you read
                                      is about the Mars underground, and how
                           they're communists or nudists or Rosicrucians --"


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