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Re: licence for Truecrypt



Michael Poole wrote:

First, Michael, thanks for your balanced response.


> it is non-free to require a distributor to serve
> copies of the work to third parties

Well, conditions in Section 3 of the GPL v2 actually
do require distributor to serve copies of the work to
third parties.


> Vagueness certainly can affect freeness. 

Yes, however, in this case it doesn't seem to.


> Under which laws would distribution within a
> corporate entity be treated as public distribution? 

Who knows? There are hundreds of countries. Laws in
some countries may not allow a corporate entity to
become a single licensee. In such countries, the GPL
might fail in this respect (i.e., become a non-free
license). 


> it seems odd to address members at the same time as
employees.

I don't think it's odd. If a license says
"member/employee", then it clearly covers both members
and employees equally. What's wrong with it? If I
wrote the license I wouldn't devote one paragraph to
members and another to employees if both paragraphs
permit the same thing.



> Is "A/B" the union or the intersection of the two
sets? 

If A is synonym of B, then B is redundant. If A is not
a synonym of B, then A/B means A "or" B. In English,
slash separates alternatives of a single syntactic
(but not semantic) element. 

Also, from the GPL v2: "it is up to the author/donor
to decide"

As you can see, GPL v2 uses slash-separated
alternatives as well. If I used your terminology, I
would say "This is a lawyerbomb".

Regards,
John

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