On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 17:44, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 02:33:16PM -0500, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > > Now, that just means it *was* consensus. If it is no longer consensus > > (and it better not be), we need to look at how such an egregious mistake > > happened, and how we can prevent it from happening again. > > On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 03:15:26PM -0500, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > > The summary I linked to was about reworked X-Oz license, which is > > clearly GPL-incompatible and probably non-free. However, clause 4 > > criticized in the summary is identical to a clause in the license that > > started this thread, and all the other X licenses, and very similar to > > the 3-clause BSD license. > > You seem to be overlooking the fact that the main reason I objected to the > compelled-advertising clause in the X-Oz license was that we could not > determine what it *meant* according to the licensor I am not discussing the compelled-advertising clause, but rather the "lack of publicity" clause; see the discussion that spawned this thread. > We asked them, and in > response, their representative promised replies and failed to deliver, and > indulged in digressions on Heideggerian existentialism. I remember that discussion well, actually. It happened in March. I agree it was pretty useless digression into unnecessary philosophy by the end, as the X-Oz folks refused to actually answer anything. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00021.html But your objection to the clause was voiced in February, and resulted in the February-published analysis of the X-Oz license referring to that clause as non-free. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00162.html Now, I can infer one of three things: 1. You had off-list contact with the X-Oz people before the license was analyzed here on -legal, and did not communicate their non-standard interpretation of that clause back to us for the summary. 2. You can travel through time, and went back to prepare the summary with the knowledge that X-Oz had weird license interpretations. 3. You are confusing the order in which events happened (I suppose this is not really in conflict with the above). I suppose 1) is possible, but I find 3) most likely. > I don't see why you consider this determination to be an "egregious > mistake". I don't know what business we have declaring licenses whose > terms we don't understand as DFSG-free. Clause 4 -- which you declared non-free in that thread *before* public conversations with X-Oz, and Brian declared non-free at the start of this thread -- is identical to that used in the existing X license. I agree that non-standard interpretations of common clauses can result in a license being non-free (c.f. pine), but I don't find any evidence that that was the case when the X-Oz license summary was published. I suspect that summary is where Brian drew his conclusion that the license that started this thread was non-free. I stand by my statement that the X-Oz license summary as currently published is an "egregious mistake". -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part