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This is not a very helpful comment. OP has made a pretty convincing argument (to my ears), and you basically say: this is wrong! You need to elaborate, or, if y

by _frkl 6y ago

This is not a very helpful comment. OP has made a pretty convincing argument (to my ears), and you basically say: this is wrong! You need to elaborate, or, if you are not prepared to do that, keep quiet. OP spent some time and effort to make their case. You did not, at all.

wegs 6y ago
Elaborating would be a law class, but the short story is that laws are read by lawyers and judges, not by computers. It's not like a for-loop where a <= versus a < can trigger an off-by-one-error. To be in compliance with the license, you need to __substantively__ follow the provisions. If you and I sign a contract that I will build a house under terms carefully laid out in the contract, and I make a change from those terms which is not material and substantive (makes no difference to you), I'm not liable for anything. The kind of nits OP is pointing at would never fly in court. From there, it isn't a question of "triggering provision" and being "liable." Liability is calculated in terms of damages. Damages aren't set to hurt people, but to make things right. If I sell you a defective car, damages are what it takes to fix or repair that car, not ten million dollars. If I use a different type of flooring building your house because the type you wanted was sold out, a court would rule on the difference in value; you can't just refuse to accept the house. This becomes really important in commercial law. All of the example OP brings up, if they were in fact problems (and they're not), they would have damages of $0.00. There is no liability, so they're okay. That's how you interpret contracts. Lawyers read, write, and follow contracts with how they'll be interpreted in mind. And from there, every other sentence is just technically wrong. E.g.: "Due to its nature, the AGPL is an EULA, not a free software copyleft license" I could write a 30 page paper on the holes there, but at the core, what's missing is a basic understanding of how commercial law works. Without that common understanding, it's like trying to convince your grandma, who has never touched a computer before, about how Facebook's algorithms work. It's hard. It requires a common base of knowledge which OP doesn't have. At that point, you're better off advising people to either take a class in basic business law, or to talk to a lawyer. Actually, a better analogy than Facebook might be data structures in git. Eben Moglen, who wrote the AGPL, is one of the more brilliant legal scholars alive today. That's much like a person who's never used a computer before trying to poke holes at Linus' hash DAG structure. At some point, you either have to trust the competence of experts, or you have to educate yourself.

by _frkl 6y ago

wegs 6y ago

Elaborating would be a law class, but the short story is that laws are read by lawyers and judges, not by computers. It's not like a for-loop where a <= versus a < can trigger an off-by-one-error. To be in compliance with the license, you need to __substantively__ follow the provisions. If you and I sign a contract that I will build a house under terms carefully laid out in the contract, and I make a change from those terms which is not material and substantive (makes no difference to you), I'm not liable for anything. The kind of nits OP is pointing at would never fly in court. From there, it isn't a question of "triggering provision" and being "liable." Liability is calculated in terms of damages. Damages aren't set to hurt people, but to make things right. If I sell you a defective car, damages are what it takes to fix or repair that car, not ten million dollars. If I use a different type of flooring building your house because the type you wanted was sold out, a court would rule on the difference in value; you can't just refuse to accept the house. This becomes really important in commercial law. All of the example OP brings up, if they were in fact problems (and they're not), they would have damages of $0.00. There is no liability, so they're okay. That's how you interpret contracts. Lawyers read, write, and follow contracts with how they'll be interpreted in mind. And from there, every other sentence is just technically wrong. E.g.: "Due to its nature, the AGPL is an EULA, not a free software copyleft license" I could write a 30 page paper on the holes there, but at the core, what's missing is a basic understanding of how commercial law works. Without that common understanding, it's like trying to convince your grandma, who has never touched a computer before, about how Facebook's algorithms work. It's hard. It requires a common base of knowledge which OP doesn't have. At that point, you're better off advising people to either take a class in basic business law, or to talk to a lawyer. Actually, a better analogy than Facebook might be data structures in git. Eben Moglen, who wrote the AGPL, is one of the more brilliant legal scholars alive today. That's much like a person who's never used a computer before trying to poke holes at Linus' hash DAG structure. At some point, you either have to trust the competence of experts, or you have to educate yourself.