luther@debian.org wrote: >>On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 03:40:54AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: >>>>reasonable. We've asked many software authors to do similar things in the >>>>past, with very frequent success, and less laughter and anger than you >>>>seem to think. >>> >>>Yes, but it is by no means reason enough to declare the QPL non-free. >> >>I didn't claim that it was, so this statement isn't relevant. > > > Ok, so everything is fine, and there is no reason to change the licence, nor > to remove ocaml from the sarge release at the last minute. > > >>>>Why do you think such a suggestion would be ridiculed in this case? I >>> >>>Because, in my case at least, the upstream authors chose the QPL after >>>long discutions, because they are interested in their properties. The >>>ocaml upstream authors are a research team in the french inria, which is >>>a state institute, so the academic world and not some evil corporation >>>or something. They want to be able to provide ocaml under other licence >>>to users who request it in order to get more founding to be able to hire >>>more developers, since after all they are but a bunch of people, and can >>>not do everything. Also they are mostly interested in a licence which >>>doesn't cause them problems, and legal issues are more a trouble to >>>them, as it is too me, than some kind of recreation, as it is for most >>>of you here. In this light and knowing the history of the licence >>>change of ocaml, from the original non-free licence (source only patch >>>only distribution of modifications possible), i can assure you that they >>>will find it ridicoulous at best, and be irritated or angry at worst to >>>a "Use the GPL" kind of solution. >> >>I'm sorry you assume that everyone's immediate response to these issues >>will be ridicule and anger. It simply hasn't been my experience. (However, >>my experience with you is that your immediate response to these issues is >>ridicule and anger, which gives me some understanding of why you would >>assume others will behave similarly.) > > > Hey, did you read what i said ? I have been in the discussion with upstream > about this issue since 6 years now, and even RMS contributed to that > discussion, and claimed the current licence was ok (Well, he suggested the > LGPL + exception for the runtime libraries, in a way that mirrors how the gcc > package does it). As thus, if i go with ridicoulous arguments to upstream, > then i will be either laughed at, or no longer considered as a valid > discussion partner on this issue, in both case i loose whatever influence i > have with upstream about this issue, which i don't want to. And not only have > i not read valid argumentation, my counter-arguments where ignored, as was my > asking for people in this discussion to CC me as i have some trouble following > debian-legal, not being subscribed to it. > A> If upstream chose this licence it was after years of discussion and thinking, > not a spur of the moment/follow trolltech's lead kind of decision like you are > implying. And by taking that kind of implications you somehow belittle the > capacity of understanding licences from upstream, and dismiss all the > discussion that lead to the current state of things. And i can assure you that > the current situation is much nicer than the patch only, no modified binary > distribution that we used to have before. > > >>"Use the GPL" is a reasonable suggestion to most users of the QPL, since >>many people who use the QPL were following TrollTech's lead, and most of >>those people have since followed it further and dual-licensed under the >>GPL. You're saying that this is an exception to that: people who are >>using the QPL on its own merits, and not simply because TrollTech did > > > Yep, and i believe that the Apple licence, the NPL and many other such ones > have similar properties. Why are we not picking on them ? The APSL was found to be non-free (see thread starting at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00545.html), and as far as I know there is no software solely under the NPL in Debian, so it is not relevant. >>>Also, one of the clauses you have problems with, the "court of venue", >>>if waived, might limit their possibilities to defend against people not >>>respecting the licence, and since one of their problematic is for big >>>corporation including their changes in java or other such bytecode >>>running languages (think C# and a corporation known for stealing code), >>>this may be quite reasonable. >> >>Then please calm down, stop expressing your fear of ridicule, and argue >>this position. > > I did, nobody even bothered to respond. Defense is much less of a problem than attack. A license that said "if you sue us, you must do so in this jurisdiction" would be far less problematic (and Free in several people's opinions including my own) than a license that says "we can sue you and you must come to this jurisdiction to defend yourself". (See http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg00197.html and replies.) - Josh Triplett
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