Re: FreeVeracity shipment.
Ross N. Williams writes:
> ftp://ftp.freeveracity.org/clients/freeveracity/freeveracity_v210/
> free_world_licence_v1.txt - Free World Licence.
Well, I started with this one, to really be sure I can package it to
the non-free distribution.
Here are some important remarks that I thought may prevent inclusion
in non-free - Not being a specialist of what can go in non-free and
what cannot even go in, I'll need avice from debian-legal people.
One problem for me is that I'm most used to deal with quasi-free
licences that are borderline to be DFSG-free, than with ones which are
borderline not to be redistributable at all !
* The sentence `You also indicate your acceptance by retaining the
Module on your computer for more than one day.' may have strange
interactions with the download of (eg.) a precompiled binary package
from debian.org/.../non-free/ - the downloader may get a large bunch
of software, and may not physically have the time to carefully read
all the licences - if he only reads the licence 2 days later, even
before ever thinking of running the program, does this mean he has
implicitely accepted a licence he did not read ?
* distribution of binaries compiled from the sources is not
explicitely allowed, and thus, under copyright law, are most probably
not allowed except for a separate permission.
* 4.6 makes it unclear whether eg. the Debian non-free dist ("the
whole") has to fall under this licence - the "separate works" notion
here is not obvious: although packages may be installed independently,
they form a whole, and the existence of the "Packages" index file used
by the packaging system may talk _against_ parts being separate works
- esp, the 4.7 section does not seem (to me) to apply to non-free.
Here are some misc less important remarks you may be interested in:
* When you mention GNU/Linux as a Free Platform, you may want to keep
in mind that there are commercial versions of GNU-based Linux systems
(such as RedHat Linux and Caldera OpenLinux), which are not entirely
composed of Open-Source branded software - IIRC, both have StarOffice
5.1a as standard part of recent versions of their respective systems.
So that you may like to clarify the examples and/or your acceptation
of "Free Platform"...
I understand that may not affect FreeVeracity, but it seems to prevent
software under this licence to interact with non-free stuff - this may
or may not be a problem to you.
* Maybe your definition of "Module" makes problem: I guess any program
comprising a "Module" as part of the .c/.h files to be compiled and
linked to form this program will be "a derivative work" under
Copyright law. So that the licence may look more permissive than it
is to someone not acquainted to these issues.
Maybe this is why the GPL uses "Program" as licencing unit.
* My personal judgment is that the `you are free to refer to such
software as "free software"' statement may sound offensive to some
people, given the contents of the lincence :|
* [very minor] Not sure about exactness of the wording in 2.2 - you
use both "the version of this Licence" and "a Free World Licence" to
refer to similar-looking things - which not more consistent choices ?
Regards,
--
Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org> | Why make M$-Bill richer & richer ?
debian-email: <dirson@debian.org> | Support Debian GNU/Linux:
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