Re: Custom license conditions and grant for Wordplay package

[Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org>]

Moshe Piekarski <moshep@melachim.net> writes:

> On 4/10/19 7:50 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
> > * If the formulation “please do foo” is an enforcible *condition* on the
> >   grant, then there are several such enforcible conditions that make
> >   this work non-free:
> Given that the wordplay package may not meet the DFSG, do I have to
> remove it?

That may eventually be necessary, if the copyright holder(s) can't be
convinced to make a DFSG-compatible grant of license in the work.

Before that, it would be better to start a discussion with the copyright
holder(s) to get a more robust grant under free software conditions.

The existing Read Me document gives some hope here:

* The spirit of the existing grant seems to be “I want this software to
  be useful to the world as free software”, which indicates that a
  future release under a GNU GPLv3-or-later grant could meet their
  wishes.

* The copyright holder clearly wants to be contacted about this and
  about people building on the work. Let's hope the contact details
  still work!

* So far there seems to be only one copyright holder in the work, which
  may make it easier to get a change of license grant. You could discuss
  with them to confirm whether this is still true for the work.

-- 
 \       “Following fashion and the status quo is easy. Thinking about |
  `\        your users' lives and creating something practical is much |
_o__)                                harder.” —Ryan Singer, 2008-07-09 |
Ben Finney