[Commons-l] Fwd: [gnu.org #339201]

[David Gerard]

"Reply hazy, read the novel."


- d.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yoni Rabkin via RT <licensing at fsf.org>
Date: 19-Jul-2007 11:39
Subject: [gnu.org #339201]
To: dgerard at 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