Re: Interpretation of the GR
On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 09:31:04PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> So the GR promotes a "do what I mean, not what I say" approach to
> license interpretation for the GFDL -- it does *not* claim that the
> literal reading of the DRM restriction is free.
But GRs don't get to say what licenses mean. Are you saying that the GR
is saying: "even though the license says we can't do this, we're going
to pretend otherwise, deliberately violate the license and hope for the
best"?
> I still think such a philosophy is an invitation to get in legal
> trouble, but it seems to be the preferred choice of the developers.
> At least Debian still believes in removing stuff without free licenses
> from Debian if the licensors decide to actually enforce their licenses
> as written.
... but at that point, it's too late. Debian and/or its users may already
be liable. Such a claim by a licensor would not be a guaranteed victory,
of course, but it does feel like Debian would genuinely be in the wrong.
Note that this is very unlike the Pine case. In that case, UW was the
licensor, applying an unnatural interpretation to its license to retroactively
retract permissions. Here, Debian is the licensee, applying an unnatural
interpretation to try to give itself permissions it hasn't been granted.
--
Glenn Maynard
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