[License-discuss] License compatibility - reg

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ben Tilly (btilly at gmail.com):

[Snipping the recap and same old, same old]

> There is actually good reason to pay attention to the FSF on this
> issue.

Ahem.

Well, I have great respect for many of the people in FSF, but they have
a long history of asserting what they would like to be the case as
established fact, most notably in the GPL FAQ.

[snip more of same]

> Furthermore if the FSF is a copyright holder to code that you're using
> (they do have copyrights on quite a bit of it), what they have
> publicly said is a particularly good predictor of what will keep them
> from getting annoyed at you.

But exactly zero about legal reality, and it might arguably be a
subtractive process.

> Not challenging the FSF guidelines would be a safe way to do that.

Doing exactly what someone else tells you to is _generally_ one way of
reducing the odds of that person being vexed by you, yes.  Thank you for
that intelligence.


> The threat of litigation is, of course, important to the enforcement
> of copyrights.  However it is rare for open source software to be
> enforced through actual lawsuits.

Ben, you're aware I'm not newly arrived from another planet, right?