On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 11:04:40AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> >> What field of endeavour does a clause along the lines of "The copyright
> >> holder may terminate this license at any time" discriminate against? How
> >> does this field of endeavour fall under DFSG 6 without it being read in
> >> an extremely broad fashion?
> >
> >Lots of them. Nuclear power plants, for example, or commercial
> >distribution. How, you say, when it doesn't mention them? Because
> >it's got a arbitrary rewriting clause written in. At some point, the
> >licensor can say, "By the way, I terminate the license for all nuclear
> >power plant operators," and from that instant on the operators are in
> >violation.
>
> No, by that argument means it discriminates against all fields of
> endeavour. Were the copyright holder to terminate the license of a
> specific subgroup, it would then discriminate against a particular field
> of endeavour. At that point, it would be unambiguously non-free.
If a license withholds essential freedoms from *all* licensees, as opposed
to just those laboring in a given field of endeavor, then I agree that such
a license does not fail DFSG 7.
A license that prevents *everyone* from distributing copies would fail DFSG
1 ("The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software
distribution containing programs from several different sources. The
license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.")
A license that prevents *everyone* from modifying the work so licensed
would fail DFSG 3 ("The license must allow modifications and derived works,
and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license
of the original software.")
The DFSG does not have a clause which mandates a license must not restrict
the usage of a work by all recipients. Does it need one[1]?
[1] People are awfully fond of skipping out of answering my questions with
the excuse that they're "rhetorical", so I hereby put you all on notice
that this isn't one.
--
G. Branden Robinson | Of two competing theories or
Debian GNU/Linux | explanations, all other things
branden@debian.org | being equal, the simpler one is to
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | be preferred. -- Occam's Razor
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