On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macm...@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 _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode