On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 11:53:45AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > > It's the same kind of backsliding that I'm worried about when it comes > > to permitting invariant text into main. To date, license texts and > > copyright notices are pretty well-defined documents with discrete > > boundaries. The GNU GPL takes some liberties with the notion of a > > license, including a fair amount of text that isn't really terms or > > conditions, but it's still easy to deal with because it's well-known, > > widely used, easy to tell where it begins and ends, and is unlikely to > > swell to dizzying proportions in the future. > > Actually, the GPL is pretty vanilla. Eben Moglen has a nice essay on > why it's been so easy to enforce--because it sticks to well-worn > ground, instead of licenses that try to remove rights by weird implied > consent methods (such as shrink-wrap licenses). Er, I think you misunderstood me. The liberties I referred have to do with including the parts *outside* the "Terms and Conditions" section, and not a statement about the legal merits of those terms and conditions. Remember, the scope of this discussion is unmodifiable text that isn't legally binding. I expect you've heard many, many more people grousing about the GPL's license terms, and perhaps that primed you to read my remakrs in that light. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | Music is the brandy of the damned. branden@debian.org | -- George Bernard Shaw http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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