Re: New DFSG Draft revision #3
On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 08:53:26PM -0600, john@dhh.gt.org wrote:
> Ben Collins writes:
> > 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.
>
> It seems to me that the Artistic says (about as clearly as it says
> anything, which isn't very) that the author promises not to sue you for
> charging a fee. I read that as "Yes, you can charge a fee".
You cannot read into the license. Just because they aren't going to sue
you does not mean that you don't break the license. If I say, you
cannot distribute my source at all, but that I wont enforce it, doesn't
mean you are allowed to. It just means there wont be any repercussions
from _me_.
> If you demand that all permissions be granted explicitly and clearly you
> are going to break a lot of licenses.
We must demand this. Licenses by law do not grant any permissions that
are not explicitly stated. If they don't say you can do it, you can't,
period.
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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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