On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 10:41:47PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote: > > >DFSG 3 was intended to forbid licensors from placing themselves in a > >specially advantaged position. If not, why doesn't DSFG 3 simply say: > > > > The license must allow modifications and derived works. > > > >=2E..hmm? > > It did in the first draft. The language that ended up appearing in the > final form only turns up after Bruce went off to discuss things with ESR > (there was some sort of ncurses licensing fun going on at the time - > ncurses didn't allow distribution of modified works. The phrasing of > what was at that point DFSG 1 but ended up being split into several > different clauses was apparantly designed to make sure that ESR was > happy). > > There's no discussion of /why/ there was the change of language - it's > not clear that it was supposed to make any substantive change to the > meaning. I think we'd have to ask Bruce to have any real idea. Okay. Given the above, is your belief that the words added to DFSG 3 ("and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.") don't actually mean anything? I would concede that I have a weaker case if they are just meaningless noise words. Are they? -- G. Branden Robinson | Nixon was so crooked that he needed Debian GNU/Linux | servants to help him screw his branden@debian.org | pants on every morning. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Hunter S. Thompson
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