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Re: Please pass judgement on X-Oz licence: free or nay?



On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 01:37:48PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 02:01:03AM +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > /*
> >  * Copyright 2003 by David H. Dawes.
> >  * Copyright 2003 by X-Oz Technologies.
> >  * All rights reserved.
> >  *
> >  * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
> >  * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
> >  * to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
> >  * the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
> >  * and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
> >  * Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
> 
> (I recall hearing something like this from Branden on IRC, but anyway)
> 
> Doesn't explicitly grant permission to distribute modified software, so it
> fails to comply with DFSG #3.

I don't recall saying anything like this on IRC.

IMO, the traditional MIT/X11 license[1] is DFSG-free.

It is, however, worth noting that many subtle variations of the MIT/X11
license exist.  That the traditional MIT/X11 license is (by
general consensus, I daresay) DFSG-free, that any license derived from it
is also DFSG-free.

The DFSG-freeness determinations we make depend on:
	1) the license terms used on a particular work;
	2) the nature and content of that work;
	3) the interpretation of the license's terms by the copyright
	   holders in the work so licensed

In my opinion, the unnamed license which I called the "X-Oz license" (for
want of a better term), and which is not the same as the MIT/X11 license
which Daniel Stone quoted, failed the DFSG primarly due to problems in 3),
not 1).  That reasonable people can interpret the license in a DFSG-free
way does not mean the licensor or copyright holder does so, and in fact we
were unable to determine what the licensor/copyright holder's
interpretation was.

[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |     It just seems to me that you are
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     willfully entering an arse-kicking
branden@debian.org                 |     contest with a monstrous entity
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |     that has sixteen legs and no arse.

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