Re: Licenses on CPAN

At 15:31 -0700 2000.09.10, Russ Allbery wrote:
>It seems pretty clear from this response, Chris, that you're not actually
>interested in discussing licensing.

That's not true.


>You are instead interested in discussing the fact that you dislike the
>law, the way the law is applied and interpreted, and the necessity for
>having software licenses.

No, I am interested in both.  The fact that you didn't understand that
could be my fault, but I think I made it clear enough.


>While I'm sure this is an interesting discussion, it's not one that I
>personally have time or inclination to get into, particularly here, so I'm
>going to bow out of arguing that with you.

Well, if you want to bring up specifics, you can.  But you (and Bradley)
said some things that were provably false, and I proved them false.  You
gave your educated opinion about the law, and I gave mine.  But you and
Bradley gave almost no specifics.  You cite the existence of legal opinion
without any specifics whatsoever.  You ask me to discuss the legal aspects
but present few legal aspects for discussion.


>It remains true, in my opinion, that software licensing is a question of
>law, and that strongly and indignantly refusing to discuss questions of
>law is likely to result in poorly chosen licenses.

Um, but I didn't refuse to discuss questions of law.  In fact, I addressed
your legal points (what there were of them, which wasn't much).


>I find it a bit disingenuous of you to jump
>into a discussion of licensing with much vigor and strongly stated
>opinions and then to refuse to actually discuss licensing, but that's just
>my opinion and you're welcome to ignore it.

That would be a fine opinion to have, if I had done that.

Maybe you are confused about my response to your statement that "If the
license is too vague to be valid, the result is that you can't use the
software at all."  I stated this as false, in that it comes from the IMO
invalid assumption that we need to base these things on law.  But I made it
quite clear that I don't think the AL falls under this distinction, so the
point is moot.  I did discuss the legal aspect of it, in how I think that
it simply doesn't apply.


>The AL is not known to be legally a free software license, and more

Again, that phrasology makes no sense.


>I guess the root difference is that I care more about ensuring that we can
>avoid the legal system than you seem to.

Actually, I think you have it backward.


>You're expressing willingness
>for people who care about the legalities to waste their time in court;

That is false.  I have expressed a lack of concern over whether or not
people who want to go to court, do go to court.  The only people who would
go to court over the AL are those who want to go to court.


-- 
Chris Nandor                      [email protected]    http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network    [email protected]     http://osdn.com/