Licensing AGAIN [was: Sharing FontLab Plugin]

[Dr. Hawkins]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com> wrote:

> It is important to understand that the Company's (LC) 'intention' can
> NOT deviate from the GPL v3 legal requirements which the FSF will
> enforce, i.e. just because the Company (LC) would like to interpret a
> paragraph one way, and allow a certain situations/circumstances,
> doesn't mean the FSF (court) will interpret it the same way.
>

It's also important to understand that the the FSF's desire to interpret in
a certain way does not suggest that a court will do the same.

A fundamental rule of construction is that the author of a document has had
its chance to speak in writing a document, and the opinion of the author
carries no weight.  In fact, documents are construed *against* the drafting
party.

That is,your opinion, my opinion, and the janitor's opinion each carry more
weight than the FSF's.

As a separate manner, as an attorney, I would be *shocked* to find a court
agree with the claim that plain text code is a derivative work.  An object
or executable, certainly, but the form of the code was fixed by the time it
hit the typist's fingers. (as an aside, autocorrect might change that--just
a passing thought)

All of that said, I won't touch GPL code with a 10 foot code; I won't even
look at it.  If I accidentally download a community version of LC, I delete
it the moment I see that the icon is the wrong color.  As an attorney, I
think that any person or organization that owns or might own intellectual
property in the future that goes near GPL3 code is just plain reckless.

Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a mail merge function to control a word
processor or editor.  It danced circles around what MS word could do.  It
could have become part of LyX, but I wasn't willing to subject it to the
GPL.

-- 
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq.
(702) 508-8462