Re: MTL license
On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 01:03:00AM +0200, Claus Färber wrote:
> > Requiring that I change function names is completely non-free; this is
> > essentially says that a forked library must be both source and binary
> > incompatible.
>
> It's a borderline case. DFSG #4 nearly allows that. However, this only
> matters if none of the other options (or a combination of them) can be
> considered free.
The only thing I can see that you might be talking about is:
"The license may require derived works to carry a different name or
version number from the original software."
which allows some changes to be required, but nothing says that requiring
*function names* to be changed is acceptable. As a practical matter, it
certainly isn't reasonable to require that all forks be made incompatible.
> 3a (or 3.1) actually provides three options (I have numbered them below
> for further discussion):
>
> 3.1.1 ``place your modifications in the Public Domain or''
> 3.1.2 ``otherwise make them Freely Available, such as by [...]'' (From
> the Definitions section: ``"Freely Available" [...] also means
> that recipients of the item may redistribute it under the same
> conditions they received it.''
> 3.1.3 ``or by allowing the Copyright Holder to include your
> modifications in the Standard Version of the Package.''
"3.1.3" is really part of "3.1.2"--it's an example of an action which
complies with "otherwise make them Freely Available", via the "such
as" phrase.
What you suggest seems reasonable, except that all of the options listed
here involve making the modifications available to the world--the examples
given don't really seem to correspond to the definition given of "Freely
Available".
I'm not sure. This isn't a problem with the real Artistic, because the
original "rename" clause is more reasonable, so this part hasn't had to
be scrutinized very much.
> > The entire "4. You may distribute the programs of this Package in object
> > code or executable form, provided that you do at least ONE of the following:
> > ..." section was removed. It seems like nothing in this license grants
> > permission to distribute binaries (modified or not).
>
> As the license clearly says that it's based on the Artistic License,
> this seems to be intentional.
I'm sure the removal of the clause was intentional. They may have simply not
wanted to place the restrictions that were under that heading. I agree that
the removal of permission to distribute binaries was probably not; it's an
easy oversight.
> However, this might be due to fact that the MPL is a template library,
> which only consists of "header" files and normally is not compiled at
> all except as a part of a program using the library.
>
> I don't think that it was the intention of the MPL owners to make any
> binary of a program using the MPL completly undistributable, so there's
> a chance that upstream might be willing to revise the license.
MTL, not MPL--different beasts.
--
Glenn Maynard
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