Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Jacobo Tarrio writes:

> O Xoves, 12 de Agosto de 2004 ás 11:29:50 -0400, Michael Poole escribía:
> 
> > > * Licenses like the QPL, which compel me to give somebody more rights
> > >   to my work than I had to his, are not Free.  They are not compatible
> > >   with DFSG 3.
> > This is where you lose me.  How is that incompatible with DFSG 3?  If
> > the license says that Entity X gets extra rights (perhaps being the
> > author of the original software), what prevents Author Y from
> > releasing modifications under the same license terms ("Entity X gets
> > extra rights to modifications")?
> 
>  You're talking about a license as "a document with license terms written on
> it". He's talking about a license as "a set of permissions the copyright
> holder grants".

If the DFSG is intended to talk about permission grants, perhaps it
should be revised to do so, instead of talking about licence terms.
DFSG#7 would be nonsensical with that meaning.

>  With this meaning, DFSG#3 would ask that anyone who distributes a modified
> work be able to give the recipient the exact same permissions she received
> from the copyright holder. If she gives a modified QPLed work to me, for
> instance, the permissions are the same, but if she distributes a copy to the
> original copyright holder, she would be forced to give him permissions she
> didn't originally receive.

That is such a strained interpretation that I cannot take it
seriously.  Even with that meaning, though, the DFSG does not say that
the original license can be the only acceptable license.

Michael Poole