Re: license requirements for a book to be in free section
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 02:38:30AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 05:29:38PM -0600, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Permission is hereby granted to copy, reproduce, redistribute or
> > otherwise use this software as long as: there is no monetary profit
> > gained specifically from the use or reproduction of this software, it
> > is not sold, rented, traded or otherwise marketed, and this copyright
> > notice is included prominently in any copy made. Software bundlers
> > who include trn among other diverse applications are exempt from this
> > restriction, as long as the distribution includes trn's source code
> > (including this license).
[...]
> > It *feels* non-free, but technically it allows people to sell the
> > software as part of an aggregate distribution as demanded by DFSG#1, and
> > it doesn't seem to breach the other points. Does this signal that it
> > should be in main, that there's a deficiency in the DFSG, that there's a
> > deficiency in my understanding, or something else?
>
> That doesn't only restrict selling it, it restrict using it ("no
> monetary profit gained specifically from the use ... of this software.")
>
> Doesn't permission to modify need to be given explicitely, too?
Both true, and I'd missed the latter (though I have commit access to
upstream CVS anyway ...). Thanks. I still find it curious that the
clause restricting commercial redistribution of the software by itself
seems to be OK.
Upstream tried to change the licence to something BSD-like in the past,
but the presence of some ancient code by other contributors
unfortunately prevented that.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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