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Re: New DFSG Draft revision #3



On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 05:33:28PM -0800, Darren Benham wrote:
> and the artistic license does say: "you may not charge a fee".  It seems to me
> that these two are in conflict with each other... even if there is "loop-hole"
> that lets a person get around it.

You are correct. It doesn't say "you can", and under the draft it says
that the permissions must be granted explicitly. Since the Artistic
License merely gives the community the responsibility to uphold the fees
charged on software under the license, it doesn't say "yes, you can
charge a fee" and therefore wouldn't be DFSG free.

Might I suggest keeping point 2.3 the same and adding this to the
restrictions list.

3.7. Fees for Distribution
--------------------------

     The license may place restrictions on the amount of the fee that the
     licensee may charge for distributing the software. However, the
     restriction should at least allow the licensee to recoup any costs in
     distributing the software (ie. break even). It may not restrict
     other software that merely resides on the same system or distribution
     as the licensed software.

     <This means that even though _this_ software may not be sold for
     profit, it may still be included on a CD that is sold for profit>

This would ensure that our CD vendors can still charge for Debian CD's
without worrying about charging for software that they are not supposed
to (any profit is from the 'other' packages).

--
-----    -- - -------- --------- ----  -------  -----  - - ---   --------
Ben Collins <b.m.collins@larc.nasa.gov>                  Debian GNU/Linux
UnixGroup Admin - Jordan Systems Inc.                 bcollins@debian.org
------ -- ----- - - -------   ------- -- The Choice of the GNU Generation


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