[I'm Cc:ing Roberto, who asked to be Cc:ed, but probably didn't see Joe's reply] On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:03:47 -0400 Joe Smith wrote: > I agree with Francesco Poli that the license, while not ideal, is > acceptable. Using 3a (licencing the changes under the same license, or any > compatible licence, and distributing them through the Debian mirror network > definately satisfies that requirement. End users can choose 3b if they will > not distribute, 3c if they want to distribute changed source without making > the changes publicly available (like posting them on the web), or 3a if they > are willing to post them on the web. > > For both Debian and end users, the binary version freedoms should be > satisifed by 4b. > > The nastiest part of the whole licence is 3, since just placing the work > under a free license is possibly not sufficent for 3a, if public > distribution is not also performed. I don't think that public distribution is required to satisfy clause 3(a). The clause says: | a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make | them Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to | Usenet or an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a | major archive site such as ftp.uu.net, or by allowing the | Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard | Version of the Package. To satisfy it, I must place my modifications in the Public Domain (mmmh, probably I cannot, since most Berne Convention signatory countries do not have any legally recognized mechanism for placing works in the Public Domain...) *or* make them "Freely Available". This term is defined at the beginning of the license: | * "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item itself, | though there may be fees involved in handling the item. It also means | that recipients of the item may redistribute it under the same | conditions they received it. So royalty-free distribution without fee charged for the work itself (but possibly with a fee charged for the distribution service...) under terms that allow further redistribution under the same conditions (any license that meets the DFSG must allow this, or else will fail DFSG#7) seems to suffice. Even if this distribution is private... IMHO, there's no forced *public* distribution in clause 3(a). What follows the "such as" in clause 3(a) is just a number of examples, rather than a complete list of options. > The whole idea here though was that the > copyright holder has the rights to see any use any changed version of the > source that did not also change the name and manpages. The licence of the > changes might not even allow the Copyright holder to incorporate the changes > without changin the licence on the work as a whole, such as if the changes > were placed under the GPL. And in fact nobody else besides the change > authors or the copyright holder could use the changes if they were placed > under the GPL, but that would still wualify under 3a. > > This is the type of messed up license obtained when a lawyer never looks > over the license, and the drafter is not familar with license drafting. The license is indeed vague and messed up: as I already stated, I dislike it... Again, my disclaimers are: IANAL, TINLA, IANADD, TINASOTODP. -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/index.html#nanodocs The nano-document series is here! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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