Re: Non-freeness of the AFL v3.0

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Francesco Poli writes ("Non-freeness of the AFL v3.0"):
> I am seeking help on bug #689919.

I disagree with all of your objections to #689919.


The only one of those objections that has any substance is the
complaint about the `reasonable efforts ... obtain assent' clause.
However, the licence author has publicly clarified that Debian's
behaviour is well within the intent of the licence.  I think that
interpretation is sufficient also to safegaurd our users and
downstreams.

Copies of the two emails
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=689919#10
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=689919#15
should probably be included in the relevant Debian copyright files.

If we want to distribute AFL3.0 code whose copyrightholder is not
Larry Rosen, we should probably send the copyrightholder an email
pointing to this interpretation, just so that they have the
opportunity to disagree now rather than later.  (And include that
email and any reply in the copyright file.)


So if you care about making this more watertight I suggest you file
bugs with patches to the copyright file, adding copies of (or maybe
pointers to) relevant emails.

Ian.