Re: [Portaudio] Re: portaudio in Debian, license updates?
"Junichi Uekawa" <dancer@netfort.gr.jp> wrote in message
[🔎] 878xrqu6x0.dancerj%dancer@netfort.gr.jp">news:[🔎] 878xrqu6x0.dancerj%dancer@netfort.gr.jp...
The web page (http://www.portaudio.com/license.html) has the following
additional clauses; which should be included in Debian package to
clarify:
Plain English Interpretation of the License
The following is a plain English interpretation of the license. This
interpretation is not part of the license and has no legal significance.
To understand the full legal implications of the license you should
consult the license itself.
* You can use PortAudio for free in your projects or applications, even
commercial applications.
* You do not have to make your own source available as open-source code
just because you used PortAudio.
* Do not take our copyright information out of the PortAudio source
code.
* If you fix a bug in PortAudio, please send us the fix.
* You cannot sue us if your program fails because of PortAudio.
If I'm the only person uncomfortable with the current wording, so be it.
Please do add the extra interpretation quote into the Debian packages.
Yes. People on d-l seem to think that text that is not legally significant,
such as that quote, or things like the preamble to the GPL have no
significance.
This is entirely untrue. While precedent may not make this clear, the
intention of a licence is important.
If a court is in doubt as to how the licence is to be interpreted it should
look at such text. Such text, especially if included near the licence, has
presumably been read by both parties. So if there are tems that are unclear,
non-parseable, or part of the licence is self contradictory, it is only
reasonable that the clause be interpreted in the manner most directly
implied by the explanitory text.
Rember that the U.S. Supreme Court will sometimes rule based not on the text
of laws, but the intent of the laws. If a court is willing to rule law based
on intent rather than text in the case of law, then it most certainly should
do so in the case of contracts.
Note: IANAL, but the above is just plain common sense.
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