Re: GPL compatible license?
Scripsit Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
> Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> > > with any other product for sale, provided that the
> > > cost of the bundled package is the same regardless of
> > > whether Elm is included, and provided that those
> > > interested only in Elm must be notified that it is a
> > > product freely available from the Elm Development
> > > Group.
> > This is GPL-incompatible, since it governs how much I may charge for
> > Elm.
> The GPL says:
> | You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
> | you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
> How do these two conflict?
The GPL does not restrict how you price the copies you transfer; the
Elm license does. For example the Elm license does not allow selling
software bundles at a cost per megabyte transferred (because then the
price would not be the same for the same package without Elm).
> Just distribute Elm (or, I guess parts of Elm, but I'm not sure, am
> I right?) on a CD or floppy disk at the same price you would charge
> for the medium without Elm (or parts of Elm).
That means that you are not allowed to charge for the labor of
transfering Elm to the media. Which discriminates against distributors
who also try to make a business of selling blank media to people who
actually want blank media.
> | or instead you may notify anyone requesting source that it is
> | freely available from the Elm Development Group.
> Doesn't this read that one may also tell people to get the entire
> pristine source from the Elm Development Group?
Yes, but the GPL does not require such notices (except from the
inclusion of license texts), so such a requirement is not compatible
with the GPL.
> By providing this license to the users, they are told so already.
Since the license already requires that users get the license, we must
assume that the references to noticing users about the upstream source
refer to something that goes beyond distributing the license.
--
Henning Makholm "Detta, sade de, vore rena sanningen;
ty de kunde tala sanning lika väl som någon
annan, när de bara visste vad det tjänade til."
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