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0 pointsdragonwriter11y ago0 comments

No, vagueness of the level of that GPL phrase isn't how the law is, and, in fact, vagueness can make a law, contract, or, e.g., license provision devoid of legal effect.

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belorn11y ago· 1 in thread

The framework for how judges operate, and the framework for contract law is quite different. Judges has quite a lot of agency and mobility to make common sense decisions. Contract law on other hand must be more rigid, and is designed around making the market more stable and secure.

In a copyright infringement case, a judge would look at license text and make a decision about its meaning. The lawyers would likely try to interpret "similar in spirit" by providing defining points from previous licenses, which a judgment can be based on. How much we trust such decision thus rest on our believes that judges in general can make a reasonable judgment.

dragonwriterOP11y ago

> The framework for how judges operate, and the framework for contract law is quite different.

Only in that the latter is a proper subset of the former; more relevantly, in US law, explicit licenses (even gratuitous ones) are applied under contract law principles, so the framework for how judges operate with them is the same as for contracts.

> How much we trust such decision thus rest on our believes that judges in general can make a reasonable judgment.

No, it rests on how much we trust that and also trust that the only reasonable judgement based on the vague text is one that we would prefer.

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