Re: wpoison, is it okay?
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 01:35:48PM +0000, Sunnanvind wrote:
> Er, no, that's not how you read it. You conjectured just like I did.
> The actual license text says nothing of the sort.
Ehm, yes. That's what I meant. Sorry.
> > Here, I disagree.
> > This is a different situation since in the case of Zope, the button
> would
> > be forcibly placed; with your interpretation of how this license is
> > intended (as opposed to what it says - again, it has to be cleaned
> up),
>
> Look, a copyright holder can "intend" to put his work under the MIT
> license, but if his actual license text consists of the GNU GPL, guess
> while one is binding upon the users?
The GPL of course; that's why I did say that it has to be cleaned up (and
I did mean before it's admitted into Debian, but I was unclear there).
> Where license text is not DFSG-free, but the author's intentions are,
> it
> is best to get the author to rewrite his license.
Of course...
> License texts are legal documents and anyone who takes it upon him- or
> herself to write one needs to be damn careful about it.
... and of course.
> > it's only if you include the logo on your page, and what would be the
> > reason to do that if you wouldn't link to the wpoison page?
>
> People might have all sorts of reasons. Maybe they'd want to point the
> link to a rival, forked wpoison project. Maybe they just don't like
> image tags inside href's.
The way I conjecture the license writers intentions; you still can point
to a rival, forket wpoison project *as long as you don't use the official
image*; and if you don't like image links, just don't link to the page at
all (in which case, don't use the logo).
> > This is a small requirement not much different from the new BSD-
> > license's "always include this notice in the source code"
> requirement.
>
> No, it's very different from the "always include this notice in the
> source code" requirement. It's more similar to the BSD advertising
> clause which was retracted by the University of California.
The way I read the BSD-license, people can't just take the code, remove
the notice and say "Hey, I wrote this!". It requires credit where credit
is due (much like the GPL).
I interpret what I suspect is the intended requirements (which, yet
again, is not written clearly enough) as "If you use the image on a web
page, you must link to the official wpoison page". (Whether software like
that should go into main or non-free, I don't know, but I do not see it
as a reason to reject it from non-free.)
What's written can also be interpreted as "If you use this program, you
must display a linked logo on your web page". (Very similar to the zope
case; but unlike the zope case it's doesn't break dfsg 3, which zope
would've done since it would automatically put the picture there and non-
removability of that code would break dfsg 3. [That might've been a
misunderstanding from me.]) In this case, I guess main would be out of
the question, but how about non-free?
For the eight time (or so, I don't keep count), yes; the license has to
be restated clearly before a decision can be made. The reason I even
entered this discussion was the "hyperlinks in an image"-part which I
believed was just a simple mistake on your part. I beg your pardon for
any percieved rudeness, I mean no ill vibes.
The obnoxious advertising, old BSD-license is listed by the FSF as a free
software license; GPL-incompatible but free. I don't know what Bruce has
said about it since I haven't had time to read all of the archives from
all of the debian lists yet.
Sunnanvind (doesn't want to be voted off the island)
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