Big development in the GUI realm

[Francis Girard]

> In any case, he may be right, and the FSF, Trolltech, and you could all
> be wrong. Your intention when you use the GPL may be moot if a judge
> determines that the text itself and copyright law does not support your
> interpretation.

I'm sorry to jump into this thread without any knowledge of these issues. I 
was just wondering if it did happen. Did some law court, over the past 
decade, had to make a decision about GPL on some real issue ? 

Thank you

Francis Girard

Le mardi 8 Février 2005 05:17, Robert Kern a écrit :
> Grant Edwards wrote:
> > Sorry if I was a bit blunt, but I'm sick of people trying to
> > weasle their way around a license by creative interpretation of
> > the license terms when the licensors made their intentions as
> > clear as possible.
>
> Believe me, I share your frustration every time this issue comes up.
> However, I think it's best to follow Robert Heinlein's maxim:
>
>   "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
> stupidity."
>
> And I think we can also replace the word "stupidity" with "ignorance" if
> you like.
>
> It seems to me that "Luke" is confused and ignorant. He has shown no
> indication that he intends to write proprietary software using Qt.
>
> In any case, he may be right, and the FSF, Trolltech, and you could all
> be wrong. Your intention when you use the GPL may be moot if a judge
> determines that the text itself and copyright law does not support your
> interpretation.
>
> I think that it is almost always best to obey the intentions of the
> copyright holder and to ask for clarification when it is unclear. On the
> other hand, if the copyright holder is *clearly* off-base with his
> interpretation (and to me this would require actual case law, not just
> the opinion of a lawyer), then I might consider disregarding the
> author's interpretation and going with what case law and my lawyer
> suggests. I don't believe that this situation holds with respect to this
> issue, of course.
>
> --
> Robert Kern
> rkern at ucsd.edu
>
> "In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
>   Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
>    -- Richard Harter