On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 11:05:57AM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
> >> scsh-0.6.4/scheme/big/sort.scm:
> >>
> >> ;;; 2. Users of this software agree to make their best efforts (a) to return
> >> ;;; to the T Project at Yale any improvements or extensions that they make,
> >> ;;; so that these may be included in future releases; and (b) to inform
> >> ;;; the T Project of noteworthy uses of this software.
[...]
> "Best Effort" is a term with specific legal meanings. "obligation to
> attempt to meet a goal using every reasonable means available," isn't
> a perfect definition, but it's close. In particular, it doesn't
> consider the costs or consequences of those actions to you: even
> Chinese dissidents can send e-mail, so they have to do so.
>
> This is not a Free license.
I concur.
> >> ;;; 3. All materials developed as a consequence of the use of this software
> >> ;;; shall duly acknowledge such use, in accordance with the usual standards
> >> ;;; of acknowledging credit in academic research.
[...]
> This is, at worst, reducible to the BSD advertising clause. It's not
> reducible to a copyright notice in the binary: if I'm giving a talk
> about a program I wrote for a professor, I'm obligated by academic
> honesty to mention inspirations and contributions *in the talk*.
> So I would read this clause as requiring acknowledgement of
> inspiration and origins in advertising material, sales pitches, and
> documentation.
I think it's worse than that.
Anything that is both mandatory *and* hopelessly vague is DFSG-non-free
because we don't have a clue what it means. And by "clue", I mean
something we're confident we can defend in court.
This clause is obviously mandatory ("All materials...shall"), and IMO
it's hopelessly vague as well ("in accordance with the usual
standards").
I think it is unethical to legally bind people to your own lazy
hand-waving. ("I have a good idea of what I have in mind here, but I
can't be assed to express it clearly, so I'll just expect you to figure
it out, and take you to court if you guess wrong.") That's bullshit.
--
G. Branden Robinson | There's nothing an agnostic can't
Debian GNU/Linux | do if he doesn't know whether he
branden@debian.org | believes in it or not.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Graham Chapman
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature