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

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Brian Thomas Sniffen writes:

> Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:
> 
> > Brian Thomas Sniffen writes:
> >
> >> * 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")?
> 
> Nothing.  And I'm happy to grant permissive licenses to INRIA/Cristal,
> Best Practical, or others who not only distribute their software, but
> manage free software projects which incorporate change from the
> community.
> 
> But the requirement that I *must* license under those terms is a
> non-Free requirement.

I do not like that kind of asymmetric license, but I do not like
patch-only or must-rename licenses, and Debian accepts those as Free.
I have not yet seen clear reasoning that shows how the DFSG would
reject an asymmetric license as non-free.  I asked above how an
asymmetric license violates DFSG 3, and I see no answer to that
question in your email.

Michael Poole