From 728c800bf3cc3696e6667e7039db211e1be8142b 2014-03-19 13:54:12 From: Bradley M. Kuhn Date: 2014-03-19 13:54:12 Subject: [PATCH] Add better introduction to this section on defined terms, including a nice anecdote. --- diff --git a/gpl-lgpl.tex b/gpl-lgpl.tex index 5628c8e329ff4aff5934c68a5c743a73920ff2b0..3f68afd5e3c217d72efd20b8c59905a1d1bdcc6e 100644 --- a/gpl-lgpl.tex +++ b/gpl-lgpl.tex @@ -2192,7 +2192,23 @@ should never trump software freedom. \section{GPLv3~\S0: Giving In On ``Defined Terms''} -% FIXME: intro defined terms +One of lawyers' most common complaints about GPLv2 is that defined terms in +the document appear throughout. Most licenses define terms up-front. +However, GPL was always designed both as a document that should be easily +understood both by lawyers and by software developers: it is a document +designed to give freedom to software developers and users, and therefore it +should be comprehensible to that constituency. + +Interestingly enough, one coauthor of this tutorial who is both a lawyer and +a developer pointed out that in law school, she understood defined terms more +quickly than other law students precisely because of her programming +background. For developers, having \verb0#define0 (in the C programming +language) or other types of constants and/or macros that automatically expand +in the place where they are used is second nature. As such, adding a defined +terms section was not terribly problematic for developers, and thus GPLv3 +adds one. Most of these defined terms are somewhat straightforward and bring +forward better worded definitions from GPLv2. Herein, this tutorial +discusses a few of the new ones. % FIXME: rewrite to FOUR new terms