RMS on Plan 9 license, with my comments

[Matthew Weigel]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, David Johnson wrote:

> > You are trying to treat the license as a cut and dried technical
> > statement, and it's not; its application includes jurisdiction,
> > precedence, judge, and jury.  Any one of those can make a decision about
> > what 'reasonable' means.
> 
> All too often it seems as if judges, attorneys and other jurists make
> use of dictionaries unavailable to the general public. Since I don't
> have access to them, I have to use my reliable Webster's. And according
> to its various definitions on the subject, if fraud or coercion is not
> utilized, then a reasonable price is anything that the seller and buyer
> agree to. If it wasn't reasonable, they wouldn't agree!

But your definition doesn't matter.  What matters is, there's this
ephemerally defined word, 'reasonable,' thrown into the license, and we
can't be sure what it would mean in a given court room at a given time.

> If I had to interpret every software license according to what a judge
> or jury may decide on a whim, then it's pretty pointless even reading
> them. In such a case I'll simply use the software and cross my fingers.

Why don't you have to 'interpret every software license according to what
a judge or jury....'?  Legal precendence is a part of deciding what
licenses do, and deciding what licenses do is part of deciding whether
they're OSI Certified or not.

Is there a problem with deleting the word reasonable?  Are you simply
arguing that it doesn't need to be deleted, that it's too small detail to
matter?  Because we don't know what reasonable might mean in a court
room, and it might make a difference.

> After all, a jury used to having Windows or MacOS bundled with their
> hardware may decide that even $2 is unreasonable for a window manager.

Ummm... IIRC the jury is compelled to use the definitions as provided in
the court room, so the lawyers would have to argue that $2 was
unreasonable.  But why give them the chance?

> > > On the other hand, to be nit-picky about it, the GPL only allows you to
> > > charge for transferring a copy, or for supplying a warranty. I can't
> > > sell the copy itself, nor can I charge for the media. 
> > 
> > Which is good.  The transfer is what people are actually interested in,
> > anyways.  Keep in mind, these licenses don't apply to the original author,
> > so the license helps licensees (users and developers).
> 
> People are typically interested in the copy. The copy is the whole
> point of the transfer to begin with. As an example, I spent a very long
> time yesterday downloading StarOffice 5.2. If after the download was
> complete I ended up with no copy of StarOffice, I would have been
> pretty pissed. 

Sorry, from the *vendor's* perspective, the transfer is the whole point --
getting their wares to the customer.  But vendors are licensees.

> Take your last sentence and read it again. How does it help the user
> that the license doesn't apply to the author? Granted, it may not harm
> them either, but how is it a benefit?

Sorry, I wasn't clear: it doesn't help that the author isn't under the
license, but that the licensees are.  Not being restricted in terms of how
much a licensee can charge for the distribution of media helps... the
licensees!