Re: License concerns regarding package lft
MJ Ray wrote:
> Terry Hancock <hancock@anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
>>No, what I *said* is that "tools" are not "materials", which they are
>>not -- at least not unless you use them as such. If you build a house
>>out of hammers, *then* the hammers are "materials", otherwise, they are
>>"tools".
>
> So, to be clear: you would claim that if one says 'this house is made using
> these materials' then the tools are not included in 'materials'?
This is not so much "clear" as "completely different", but yes, that is
the principle meaning of the word "materials" and the ony logical reason
why the author would've used the term here.
A court is going to consider what the apparent intent was -- not try to
stretch the meaning beyond the obvious.
> Would you expect an art *materials* catalogue to...
Hereafter, you are trying to stretch the meaning to something that it
obviously wasn't intended to mean.
You can do that, because the license is POORLY WRITTEN. Which I have
already said. Miraculously, you and I appear to AGREE on that point.
One consequence of this is that some lawyer might try to play the same
games with the language that you are doing here.
I think the court would laugh in his face, but who knows?
> I'm trying to understand how it is possible to claim that compilers
> don't fit the meaning of materials there
That would be by using the *normal*, *first* definition of "materials"
and not some alternate meaning that has come about by association.
There is also the point that it wouldn't make any sense to require the
meaning you are attempting to press: is there even a compiler which can
be "released in source format under conditions of this license"? If not,
then it stands to reason that the author, knowing this, cannot have
intended to limit compilation to such a hypothetical compiler. This is
yet more evidence for an intent which agrees with the obvious
interpretation of the language.
So, are you saying you honestly believe the author's intent was to block
compilation of changes to his package altogether? If so, why distribute
source at all? Furthermore, you believe that having this irrational
intent, he then tried to hide it by using a word which *might* be
interpreted to support his intent, but whose most obvious meaning
contradicts it?
I find that a pretty implausible theory.
Your interpretation is distorts the license's original intent by using
alternate meanings of words. As such it may even be semantically correct
(that is, it may be within the set of possible semantic meanings of the
utterance), but it is pragmatically incorrect (it is not the subset of
that set that was meant by the author -- as we can tell from context).
Intent is a matter of pragmatics[1] -- the study of situated utterances
as evidence for meaning, not semantics[2] -- the study of isolated
utterances for potential meaning.
You're pounding very hard on the semantics, trying to broaden the set of
possible meanings, and you're not wrong about that as far as you go, but
that's missing the point. The question was not "what could this sentence
possibly mean", but "what did this sentence mean when the author wrote
it" -- which is what actually matters legally.
The rest of the license, the fact of using the license, the fact of
releasing software with source code and the consequences of licensing
choices all provide situational information which supports the pragmatic
interpretation of the sentence in question.
The fact that courts (or we) have to go beyond semantics to understand
the license is a serious flaw of the license, which I've already pointed
out, but as evidence of the author's actual intent, I think it is
sufficient.
Cheers,
Terry
IANAL, TINLA, etc.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics
--
Terry Hancock (hancock@AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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