Re:MacOS 10.12.6 Source
by thomastjeffery on Friday September 15, 2017 @12:59AM
(#15254762)
So you are saying that Apple would want to enforce it in a way that is less convenient for Apple than the way the license author would enforce it?
That is just as absurd.
No, heβs saying that if Apple chooses to trust the license author when they say that they interpret it in a specific way, they might get screwed if the license author changes their mind. Should that happen, a court of law would have the authority of legal interpretation.
No, they're saying that the people actually having to defend the position, the people with actual skin in the game, (Apple legal) believes this.
The opinion of the writer of a legal document carries only tangential weight next to the actual written words of this document.
And of course Apple is going to take the conservative position until a court rules on how to interpret the license; it's just not worth the risk to them.
How do you know what they actually believe?
I don't, as such. But a grandparent made a claim of their position: "It's not the position of the FSF who actually wrote the license."
Well, neither is Apple. And not just that, but Apple has incentive to spread misinformation about the GPLv3 (to discourage projects from using it so they can continue to use existing software without making their platform freedom-respecting).
The author of a license is not the person with the legal authority to interpret its meaning.