Re: New DFSG Draft revision #3
On Sat, Jan 16, 1999 at 06:39:53PM -0800, Darren Benham wrote:
> I'm not sure I'd agree that the version of DFSG aj and I are working
> would allow the "powered by" clause -- atleast not as a binding
> restriction. In our proposal, the section you quote says nothing
> about the notices in finished work the way Ian's proposal did. I
> wouldn't call a produced web page either source or documentation and
> it's certainly not the software being executed.
In the case of Zope, I have to disagree. You have to think of Zope as
an application with an GUI realized in HTML. I don't see a difference
to an application that publishes its GUI as X11 calls:
Your DFSG2 draft says "The license may require such notices to be
displayed: * during execution of the software".
Consider a license for an application with an X11 GUI. If the license
would require that you always give credits to the original author by
the way of an "About" panel, I think this would be acceptable
according to your draft.
Now where's the difference if the same program also has an web GUI and
if the license had the same requirement ?
> Personally, I think it would be a far reach to even call any/all web
> pages "advertising material". And if it could, under the current
> wording, I'd change it to be "material offering the software
> package" or some such thing... Unless
> Debian *wants* that sort of attribution clause to be DFSG-free....
Yep. This has nothing to do with the advertising clause.
> > This leads me to the following question: The current DFSG doesn't
> > explicitely rule out postcard-ware nor things like the ZPL attribution
> > requirement [2]. The new proposals all disallow postcard-ware
>
> hence the desire to release a second version of the DFSG...
>
> > requirements, but specifically allow notice requirements. This leads
>
> but in a very restricted sense...
>
> > me to the conclusion that notice requirements are accepted by the
> > common interpretation of the current DFSG (contrary to
> > postcard-ware-like requirements). Is that correct ?
>
> I supposed it could be argued, in letter.. but they seem unacceptable in the
> spirt of the DFSG.
Well, do you think requirements for notices during the executions of
the software are acceptable in the spirit of the DFSG ? If that's the
cause, I don't think you can rule out the "powered by" clause in the
ZPL.
Don't get me wrong: I don't advocate the notices clause in your
proposal. It's just that I think it's obvious that it includes
licenses like Zope's, and since nobody argued against the clause, I
wondered if that was an commonly accepted interpretation of the DFSG
between the developers.
Gregor
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