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Add better introduction to this section on defined terms,

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including a nice anecdote.
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Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-03-19 09:54:12 -04:00
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gpl-lgpl.tex
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@ -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