"Junichi Uekawa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The web page (http://www.portaudio.com/license.html) has the following additional clauses; which should be included in Debian package to clarify: Plain English Interpretation of the License The following is a plain English interpretation of the license. This interpretation is not part of the license and has no legal significance. To understand the full legal implications of the license you should consult the license itself. * You can use PortAudio for free in your projects or applications, even commercial applications. * You do not have to make your own source available as open-source code just because you used PortAudio. * Do not take our copyright information out of the PortAudio source code. * If you fix a bug in PortAudio, please send us the fix. * You cannot sue us if your program fails because of PortAudio. If I'm the only person uncomfortable with the current wording, so be it. Please do add the extra interpretation quote into the Debian packages.
Yes. People on d-l seem to think that text that is not legally significant, such as that quote, or things like the preamble to the GPL have no significance. This is entirely untrue. While precedent may not make this clear, the intention of a licence is important. If a court is in doubt as to how the licence is to be interpreted it should look at such text. Such text, especially if included near the licence, has presumably been read by both parties. So if there are tems that are unclear, non-parseable, or part of the licence is self contradictory, it is only reasonable that the clause be interpreted in the manner most directly implied by the explanitory text. Rember that the U.S. Supreme Court will sometimes rule based not on the text of laws, but the intent of the laws. If a court is willing to rule law based on intent rather than text in the case of law, then it most certainly should do so in the case of contracts. Note: IANAL, but the above is just plain common sense. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
