Better proxy support available via libcurl?

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 02 Aug 2006 20:18:01 -0700,
"Robert J. Hansen" <rjh at sixdemonbag.org> wrote:
> You may think there's no ambiguity there.  I think there's enough
> ambiguity for a lawyer to credibly claim his or her client's
> interpretation is reasonable, especially given how technically
> illiterate most judges are.

I am very well aware of the fact that it is a lawyers job to sell an
apple as an orange and get away with it.  However, I think that as
long as we are talking among ourselves, I think it is reasonable to
stay within the boundaries of a sensible discussion, where apples are
apples and oranges are oranges.

If we agree that the FSF's intent is clearly what I said, and that the
attempt to use the cited exception in a free software distribution to
ship openssl linked with GPL is abusive of this intent, then I think
it is a call to reason and partnership to act as if this intent was
law (as long as the intent itself is not immoral or against law).

It is not my objective here to make a case against any violations of
this intent in front of a court.  If we have to settle these things in
front of a court, or in a lawyer-like manner, among ourselves, we are
clearly in trouble.  I think a proper manner to deal with these issues
is to figure out what everybody involved wants to achieve, and then
see how it can be done.  This requires a dialogue where the real
issues come on the table, not a discussion about legal corner cases.

In this case, I think what the FSF wants to achieve is to keep up the
integrity of the freedom of the software.  For this, it is vital that
the GPL is not weakened.  This also benefits distributors like Suse
(and maybe even openssl developers).  What distributors want to
achieve is to build a usable operation system with little effort.  I
consider the freedom of the software to be valuable enough to impose
some effort on distributors and others (including ourselves) to fix
this properly, in one of the several ways I outlined in my other mail
(there may be others).

Thanks,
Marcus