Re: Should the ASP loophole be fixed? (Re: The Affero license)
Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 05:47:44PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > > 1. requiring that modified source be distributed as patches+original
> > > (so, no public CVS, since cvs co gives fully-merged source).
> > We have a general consensus that this was a hoop we should not have
> > permitted.
>
> No, we do not.
>
> It's something that upstream authors should not require, but it does not
> make something non-free. Bad != Non-free.
I'm sorry, I misspoke; thanks for the correction.
We have a consensus of some people that it is a sufficiently onerous
restriction that we should not have put it in the DFSG. Many people
might think it's below the "genuine pain" threshhold. I shouldn't
have said "general"; that could be misunderstood as implying Debian in
general, and I don't know that. Only that most of the recent comments
on it here took the view that it was a bad idea to include it in the
DFSG.
Of course bad != nonfree; and even if we all did agree that the DFSG
should not have included that provision, it does. And even those who
think that now do not necessarily think we should remove it. (I think
it was probably a mistake, in retrospect, but I don't think we should
remove it; too many people depend on it, and it's not *that* onerous.)
Thomas
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