Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.
Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> writes:
> Walter Landry wrote:
>> I haven't seen anyone seriously dispute my analysis in
>>
>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg01705.html
>>
>> that there is a fee involved (you questioned whether it was an
>> acceptable fee, not whether it was a fee at all). Matthew Palmer
>> mentioned it again here
>>
>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg01739.html
>>
>> and there was no response. I also mentioned it here
>>
>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/08/msg00131.html
>>
>> Unless someone comes up with something now, the argument looks pretty
>> clear.
>
> I strongly disagree that such clauses are non-free.
>
> Consider for a moment a license that said something like "You must
> either distribute under this license with source, or under a proprietary
> license without source.", (where the license is otherwise
> BSD/MIT/X11-like, and with a definition for "proprietary" given
> somewhere in the license). This would be a form of "copyleft", that
> requires derived works to maintain the "right" for _everyone_ to make
> proprietary derived works. I think such a license would still be Free,
> albeit annoying. For someone who only cares about Free Software, the
> additional permission is useless, and only serves to allow others to
> take the work proprietary.
I have two interesting permissions with your license:
1) Distribute with source, passing this license along.
2) or under a proprietary license without source.
I must have received the code under grant 1. So the Free path is for
me to distribute under grant 1. If I received it under grant 2, well,
then it's a proprietary license and we all agree I don't have free
software.
I have to pass along 2, but I have the right to take advantage of it
if I like. It's a grant of permission I have, part of the license I have.
> Now consider a similar license with one change: only the original
> developer may release under a proprietary license. Such a change
> reduces the number of people who can take the software proprietary. It
> seems like if the case above is a Free license, then this one would be
> as well, and would actually be preferable.
This is not Free. It gives these grants:
1) Distribute with source, passing this license along.
2) or, if you're Bob, under a proprietary license without source.
Now I have only one grant of permission. I have to pass along 2, but
I don't get to take advantage of it at all.
> Finally, it seems like this is covered by the DFSG FAQ
> (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html) point 12e, which says that
> it is fine for some people to have more rights than others, as long as
> everyone has a Free license.
That "as long as" is important. It can be engaged in two ways. If I
say "GPL except for to Bob, who gets Nothing! Nothing!" then that's
not Free, because Bob doesn't have a Free license. If I say "BSD to
teachers, GPL to everybody, and that pair must be passed along" then
that's not Free. The QPL says "BSD to inria/cristal, copyleft/patch
to everyone else, and that pair must be passed along" -- that "must",
that added restriction, is the non-free part.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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