Re: Results for Debian's Position on the GFDL
Adam McKenna <adam@flounder.net> writes:
> I'm in disbelief that people participating on a board called
> "debian-legal" would take one sentence from a license, read it without
> considering the context or any of the the other text in the license,
> and declare it non-free.
>
> Do you think that this is how courts work in real life?
I think there's very good reason for d-l's typically pessimistic
evaluation of licenses. J. Random Hacker is at a distinct disadvantage
in our legal system (U.S., in my case) with respect to just about anyone
who might file a suit. We're not really worried about cases where the
copyright holder is friendly and reasonable, obviously. We're concerned
about cases where that's not the case. And one thing that should be
clear to anyone is that even the best of circumstances can turn sour and
antagonistic given the right sequence of events.
So when evaluating a license we assume the worst: evil, nasty,
duplicitous copyright holders who have a personal vendetta against
anyone and everyone. Thankfully, that's not the typical case, by a long
shot. But there are enough cases that come close to merit such
pessimism when reading licenses.
In an ideal world, you'd be right that the reasonable version would
always win. Bad guys would always wear black hats so we can identify
them, and they'd always lose. But that's not the real world.
The GFDL, in my strong opinion, offers much more than the average amount
of ambiguity and risk for potential licensees. Most of it doesn't
represent a real difference of opinion, I think, but it's there
nonetheless. What's more, we've had an extremely hard time getting
clarification from the FSF on these issues. No doubt we bear a portion
of the blame for this: personality conflicts, etc., etc.; I'm sure you
know the drill. But the fact remains that we absolutely do *not* have
clarification, despite multiple attempts to get it.
Maybe your opinion on what constitutes a "reasonable" interpretation of
the GFDL matches that of the FSF. Maybe no user of Debian software is
ever going to have an opinion on what constitutes "reasonable" that
doesn't match the FSF. Maybe no other copyright holder who uses the
GFDL is going to have a different opinion on what constitutes
"reasonable". All this despite a whopping lot of ambiguity in the
simple text of the license, and despite d-l's abundance of experience
with very odd interpretations even of language we thought was
self-evident (UW, anyone?).
Maybe. But that's an awful lot of maybes, and my opinion is that the
odds are considerably less than 50% on each and every one of them.
That's why I think the GR was, frankly, _stupid_. Crucially, I think
it's a violation of the trust that Debian's users have in us.
But all that's just my opinion. And I'm not even a DD, so I don't get a
vote. And I didn't even participate in the discussion leading up to the
vote because, frankly, I'm sick and tired of the issue and it never
occurred to me it would turn out as it did. I'm ready to move on and
forget about the GFDL. But your comment above isn't really about the
GFDL at all, but about how d-l interprets licenses.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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