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>Doesn't matter what you or I think GPLv3 says.

I have read the license. I'm like that.

And it still doesn't matter.

It's what the lawyers think. And they say it's verboten.



There are only so many options here. Either:

* You are lying that you read the license.

* You were lying about what the license says.

* You really dont want to admit that you have misunderstood the license.

Either way, you were wrong then and you are wrong now about what the lawyers think. Speaking of which, there are only a few possibilities here as well, only these are not mutually exclusive:

* You are intentionally dishonest because you have an agenda

* You are dishonest just to cover your behind

* You are genuinely careless about what you say

Even if we change the word 'think' for 'say', it's still a gross overgeneralization.

So all things considered, in the best case scenario, you refuse to admit when you are wrong, and will continue overgeneralizing. Forgive me, but it's really not worth the effort arguing under these circumstances. If you wanted to continue, you would have to make some concessions, but I doubt you will, so in all probability: Goodbye.


>You were lying about what the license says.

I was reporting what I was told by corporate lawyers. My own reading of the patent section does happen to side with the lawyers' reading: That if you distribute an app that's protected by a patent you own a license to, that you need to arrange a sublicense for all users of that software. Maybe not technically "impossible," but I didn't count "spending millions of dollars to fix the problem" among the likely corporate responses when I said "impossible." Especially when most GPLv3 code can be written from scratch for less than the cost to license patents.

Someone alleged Blizzard uses it; fine, their lawyers either disagree, weren't consulted, or are being ignored, but Blizzard doesn't make Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, so the point is moot if you care about web adoption, which would make the format relevant to anyone but a game developer.

What matters is what the lawyers for the big companies that control Chrome and IE won't let GPLv3 code into the code base. Many other big company lawyers take the same position (probably all companies above some size threshold), and that's all I've been alleging from the start. Criticize my delivery all you want, but that's what I was trying to say.

My agenda is to get the developers to change to a license that could actually be adopted into a web standard. Since you're refusing to actually read what I'm saying, I agree: Goodbye.


What would cost millions of dollars? Please cut the drama out already and limit yourself to arguments. You're finally starting to display understanding of the patent clause.

Companies wouldn't adopt things under "GPLv3", but they wouldn't a permit GPLv2 either. Or LPGL. Or Apache 2. Or MIT, or BSD, or any license. They permit nothing short of contributors assigning them copyright and the patents, just them (see eg. Webkit's and Chromium's copyright notices and CLAs). And yet, libpng is under a license. So yeah, I agree they'd write their own library - out of their selfishness. Let them.

With the "adopting a web standard" thing you're attempting to further move goal posts. But you fail, and not because your implication that standard bodies would accept permissive licenses is wrong - which it is, because they're exclusively public domain + patent clause (oh and the people building browsers still contribute somehow). You fail because you're mixing apples and oranges again; programs are not parts of standards. Standards describe file formats, and prescribe behavior of programs that process them. They are not concerned with implementations' licenses.

The spec can become a public domain standard, and all would still be well with the library under (L)GPLv3+. Free software should have the edge.




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