Either way you read it, you have to give either little
or no meaning to something in the license. >>
I think I agree with that.
<<
I dont know what meaning that third definition, as you
call it, has.
>>
That's what I was afraid of. When Tim disagreed he never came up with any interpretation of the third meaning either. I don't think it's possible to come up with a good meaning for it, and to use the license the way the industry wants to use the license.
If you give that third meaning for OGC the signficance it seems to have on its face, it really does some strange things to the way people seem to want to use the license (putting a bunch of the industry into instant but minor breach). And if there's any good way to give effect to that in some other way, you should do so, because it's bad public policy to put half an industry in breach of a widespread license. And so you accept those interpretations only if they are logically unavoidable interpretations.
<<
If i have to
give little or no meaning to a part of a legal
document, it would be to a poorly drafted catch all
phrase, not to a specific instruction. >>
Interesting. You are reading in a nullity as well, but you have a pretty solid framework for why you view that you must oust that part of the definition. I don't know that I agree with it fully, but it means that you are at least consciously omitting it to preserve the integrity of the license as you see it.
<<But your
argument is very surgical.>>
It was, admittedly. Normally one wants to look at the license as a whole. I've never seen a license before with a largely unambiguous clause that was seemingly against the actual intent of the license. If it was vague I would have found a way to bend it until it broke.
However, the clause I was focused on sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn't fit into any really clean reading of the rest of the license. And nominally with such problematic wording I would, if I had found it vague on its face, immediately looked to industry practice, intent, etc. I broke out the "venn diagrams", etc. you referred to in a desperate attempt to find ANY reading of the license that gave that line effect and gave even minimal effect to everything else.
I found no such way to interpret it other than the one I did. I found lots of ways to interpet it if it had like a few more words. What I think it wanted to say somehow, and failed utterly to say, was that "any portions of a covered work which are translations or otherwise derivative of Licensed OGC must themselves be OGC".
It doesn't say that at all, though.
<< The law is much more
practical.>>
I agree, as a general principle, Clark. When there are vague sections of a license you take into account intent, industrial traditions and practices, etc. This was a section of the license, however, which seemed unambiguous, but sort of wedged in sideways into an otherwise functional license.
<<
But I'm not saying you are on crack for making the>
argument you are making :)
>
Thanks And I appreciate that there may be some reasons to want to ignore the clause I've been hyper focused on to otherwise preserve the overall integrity of the license as you see it. I don't know if I fully agree with your reasoning, but I certainly can appreciate why you think it's the best construction of the license we can arrive at given the problems with that definition. I think you and I are fully agreed upon that that definition section is problematic.
Thanks again for your responses.
Lee
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