Re: Contracts and licenses

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>]

Lex Spoon wrote:

>> * A consideration: if the license document specifies consideration to
>>   the licensor, the license can't be free.
> 
> Certainly it's a problem if the consideration is sending $1000 to the
> author.  However, DFSG1 says merely that you cannot charge a royalty or
> fee; it does not say that you must require nothing at all, if I am
> reading it correctly.  Consider two cases where a required consideration
> might still leave the license agreement being free.
> 
> 
> First, the consideration may be something completely acceptible for a
> free software license, e.g. "you will include source code with any
> distribution of the program."  This may be less trivial than it sounds:
> the agreement may grant you full rights but then say you are obligated
> not to use them all.

This should be considered as a restriction on the grant of rights to
distribute the program.  If you had rights to distribute the program
binary-only for other reasons separate from the license (say, a different
license), and this license took those rights away, this would *not* be a
free requirement.

For instance, consider a GPL-licensed work where the copyright holder offers
licenses to use the program without source for a fee.  I should certainly
be able to use the proprietary license from the copyright holder for one
project and the GPL for another.  If the GPL contained such a requirement
and it wasn't a restriction on the grant of rights, but rather an *actual*
consideration, this would be impossible.  Get the picture?

-- 
There are none so blind as those who will not see.