On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 07:12:13PM -0500, Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote... > > Also, I don't much like this these terms of the QPL,, but I can't > > actually find anything in DFSG they violate: > > (3)b. When modifications to the Software are released under this > > license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the > > initial developer of the Software to distribute your modification > > in future versions of the Software provided such versions remain > > available under these terms in addition to any other license(s) > > of the initial developer. > > IMO, it is against the spirit of Free Software to require the assignment > of your intellectual property rights in anything for the freedom to > modify someone else's intellectual property. It is mostly redundant. The paragraph basically says, that the initial developer has the right the merge any patches that are under the same licence. It doesn't request any "assignment" of some kind of IP right, just to licence the stuff to the developer. The GPL for example requires you to licence your changes under the GPL. The tricky part are the last two rows. They grant the initial developer (and only him) the right to use the modifications under some other licence he has separately licenced the application under (which he can do freely as long as he has the copyright to all the code and all other code is licenced under this paragraph). I'd also feel this as being little "dirty" but it is still FSFish-free than the BSD-style licences, because it only allows the initial developer to turn the modification into a proprietary product, while the BSD licences allow anybody to do so. The QPL certainly is not GPL-compatible, but is as certainly DFSG-free. -- Oliver M. Bolzer oliver@gol.com GPG (PGP) Fingerprint = 621B 52F6 2AC1 36DB 8761 018F 8786 87AD EF50 D1FF
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