[ in lists reply, because I really need a wide range of, possibly
authoritative, opinions on this damned book! ]
On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 12:48:45AM -0600, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> So, if I understand O'Reilly's new view correctly, I could build a business
> around selling printed versions of the content in O'Reilly books under this
> license so long as each copy of my books also contains material from
> "several other sources"? So, for example, hardcopies of Alice In Wonderland
> plus this O'Reilly book is okay, but hardcopies of this O'Reilly book alone
> is not.
Absolutely right.
> Does this discriminate against people who want to sell printed versions of
> unmodified O'Reilly books under this license with *no* other content added
> (that is, essentially republishing these O'Reilly books)? If so, does this
> discrimination run afoul of DFSG #5 or #6 (interpreting "program" to cover
> the O'Reilly work under this license)? If not, what exactly constitutes a
> group of people with relation to DFSG #5? Is publishing a "field of
> endeavor"?
<IMVHO>
This is not a problem for DFSG#5 (No Discrimination Against Persons or
Groups) because people and groups are not to be classified by what the
want to do, but by what they "are" (i.e. sex, religions, ideas ...);
this obviously if interpreted correctly the DFSG.
Also this is not a problem for DFSG#6 (No Discrimination Against Fields
of Endeavor), because I intend "use" to be the use of the book (i.e. the
reading), not the reselling because you don't "use" the book you are
reproducing it or in other word redistributing. For redistribution does
apply the DFSG#1 (Free Redistribution) that does explicitely use the
"aggregate software distribution", again where the meaning of "software"
will be extended to the book.
</IMVHO>
As a side comment, please note that I'm not fighting a battle _for_
O'Reilly, I only want to exactly understand under which conditions I can
put this book in free part of debian (yes I know, in fact this is the
only existing debian).
> And, on a different topic, why didn't Debian adopt the same guidelines for
> determining free versus non-free that the FSF has used?
Because debian is more "liberal" than FSF.
Cheers.
--
Stefano "Zack" Zacchiroli <zack@cs.unibo.it> ICQ# 33538863
Home Page: http://www.cs.unibo.it/~zacchiro
Undergraduate student of Computer Science @ University of Bologna, Italy
- Information wants to be Open -
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