"Reply hazy, read the novel."
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Yoni Rabkin via RT licensing@fsf.org Date: 19-Jul-2007 11:39 Subject: [gnu.org #339201] To: dgerard@gmail.com
Hello,
Please accept our apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We rely on volunteer effort and often have difficulties keeping up.
I appreciate what you are trying to do, and even though what you wrote about the GNU licenses is factually correct, I don't think that a summary of the GNU licenses would be a good thing. Please let me explain why:
When someone asks me for a summary of one of our licenses, I always respond that the license itself is the shortest possible text with all the requirements of the license. If it were possible to make the license any shorter, while still achieving its goal, the FSF would do that.
In my experience as a GPL Compliance Lab volunteer, such a summary encourages people not to read the license text itself. Then people will have an incomplete knowledge of the requirements the license imposes and the freedoms it grants.
Many questions concern special cases, and obviously not all of them can be summarised.
Finally, in some cases the questions are actually about copyright law (e.g. "is X considered distribution in my country?") and have nothing specific to do with the license. In these cases we often recommend legal counsel.
What works best for me when answering licensing questions such as these is to first recommend that the person read the entire license text carefully, refer to our FAQ* and see if that solves the their problems. Then ask us questions about what they read as needed to resolve any misunderstandings. Another benefit of this that we get feedback about the license itself, and not an ancillary document.
* http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html
-- I am not a lawyer, the above is not legal advice
Regards, Yoni Rabkin