Re: DFSG-freeness of Apache Software Licenses
A program covered by the GPL or BSD is indeed not free if it happens
to be encumbered by a patent that somebody is enforcing actively.
The precense of a (limited) patent grant in your license makes it
natural to assume that the program in question *is* (or is expected to
be) encumbered by such patents. If there are no relevant patents at
all, then of course the patent grant and the restriction are both
no-ops, but then why have them there at all?
Because there is no such thing as software that isn't covered by at
least a dozen patents, most of them applying to the languages used
in writing the software itself. The ASF is a nonprofit corporation
and does not have any patents. What we are trying to prevent is a
patent owner submitting a contribution that includes the patented or
patent-pending material for the purpose of later suing those who
use the larger work. The patent itself might not even be granted yet,
let alone be publicly known.
If the proposed 2.0 license is non-free, then none of your example
licenses are free either.
Licenses are not free by themselves. Software may be free. The
copyright license plays a big role in determining whether that is the
case, but the judgement cannot be made for a license without
considering it in relation to the software it applies to.
Which is why the patent license has no impact on the "free"ness of
the software in question, regardless of what that software will be.
What we say is the software licences under the GPL or the BSD license
will not be non-free *because of that license*. There may still be
patent issues that prevent such software from being included in Debian.
And the same can be said of the proposed Apache license -- under no
circumstance will it become non-free *because of that license*.
AFAIK, Debian does not redistribute Java software,
There's plenty of Java in Debian...
Not Java that implements parts of the Java Specifications.
so neither the RI nor the TCK licenses apply to Debian.
... and in any case, free licenses cannot be specific to Debian.
Argh! There is nothing Debian-specific in the license itself.
Read the DFSG. Re-interpreting its clauses in such a grossly
unsupported fashion does nothing but disgrace your process for
reviewing licenses.
....Roy
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