An Open Letter of Thanks to Alexander Terekhov

[Nick Daly]

Dear Alexander,

I just wanted to compose a little note thanking you for your 
recent work.  You've clarified a few licensing questions that I've 
had by getting me thinking and providing the best-ever examples of 
the most important details.   In reference to the GemRB project 
and it's separate-but-associated-installer, I was troubled, as 
both the project and its installer are distributed together, but 
will soon be under different versions of the GPL.  Thus, two 
licenses would exist across a single project.  Fortunately, you 
provided the most eloquent guidance to the situation's solution 
with your incessant nattering about the interpretation of "mere 
aggregation" and "interpretation".  Best I could understand, you 
were arguing that the "mere aggregation" clause requires all 
co-distributed software to be under a single version GPL if any of 
it is under the GPL.   Then an idea occurred to me: to clarify the 
situation, why not look at precedent?  Not the precedent of the 
courts of which there is very little precedent (for better or 
worse) to go on.  No, instead, look at the precedent of history 
itself.  If your interpretation of "aggregation" were correct, the 
Debian project would've been sued out of existence over a decade 
ago by Richard Stallman himself or it wouldn't distribute any 
GPLed software as the GPL would contradict their `Debian Free 
Software Guidelines`_ (number 9).  Obviously, neither of these 
situations is true so the "mere aggregation" clause, as otherwise 
pointed out, must apply only to "derivative works" as defined by 
the FSF.   .. _`Debian Free Software Guidelines`: 
http://www.debian.org/social_contract

I wondered about that for a few days; why your argument would shed 
so much light on the situation.  Then another idea occurred to me: 
why you focus on the interpretation of "interpretation" itself. 
You have a rather unusual argument style - you have a fantastic 
desire to quote other authorities in your arguments.  Some of your 
posts are literally nothing more than other's articles, but that 
strategy underlies your method of argument.  You quote anyone's 
opinion as long as they agree with your position, whether or not 
they're actually qualified and positioned to make the decisions. 
Interpretation, as you make abundantly clear, is important because 
interpretation differs.  However, an interpretation matters only 
when it's the interpretation of someone actually in a position of 
power to make a decision in the first place.  It's like saying 
elections are decided by pundits instead of the people.  It's 
similar to the truth, but still wrong in essence and example. 
Finally, thanks for pointing out the Moglen presentation, that was 
an interesting listen.   So, basically, Alexander, thank you. 
Thank you for pointing out the flaws in your arguments by 
precedent and counterexample and by furthering the purpose of all 
those annoying acronyms that protect the creative freedoms of the 
downstream software user.   Seriously, if your effort was to 
strengthen the philosophical basis and position of the GPL, you've 
done a great job.  You're a really cool undercover GNU agent. 
Thanks!   Nick -- 
GPG: 0x4C682009 | 084E D805 31D8 5391 1D27  0DE1 9780 FD4D 4C68 
2009