On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 01:30:52AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: > On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:54:29AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:46:51AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: > > > On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:16:21AM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote: > > > > Justin Pryzby wrote: > > > > > ftpparse.c heading: > > > > > > > > > > Commercial use is fine, if you let me know what programs > > > > > you're using this in. > > > > > > > > > > Which I believes fails the desert-island test? Legal, can you > > > > > confirm? > > > > Confirmed; requirements to notify the author are non-free. > > > Bullshit. There's no requirement whatsoever that a source file may be > > > used at all "commercially", assuming the common definition of > > > "commercial" == "closed source". > > Such a definition is wrong, and will not appear in any dictionary entry for > > that word. > Wrong? Well http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Commercial-HOWTO.html uses the > term to mean exactly that. Certainly other meanings could be derived, > but I think my definition is the most common in the context it was used. You neglected to respond to the observation that this definition is not found in the dictionary; instead you choose to continue conflating the terms "commercial" and "proprietary" -- to the detriment of the cause of FOSS, I might add -- using an appeal to authority to justify it. Regardless, the point remains that "lots of other people use the word wrong" is not much of a defense if the copyright holder decides there's been copyright infringement when one of our users does something with the software that the DFSG says they should be able to do. > It's clear to me that the author intends for this to be free by our > standards. That's an incredibly bold claim on your part, given who the author is. I don't presume to know anything about the thought processes of upstream authors when they license their code beyond what they've actually said. > However, that author is DJB and getting any clarification is most likely > not going to happen. However, it's been around for years and has been > used in many free software projects without any problems that I can find. Lack of historical enforcement is also no defense against a charge of copyright infringement. > I can only find it currently in 2 packages in Debian--prozilla and elinks. > The others that used it in the past (libcurl, wget?) likely rewrote the > code since it was obsolete anyway. Why not just take the code from one of > those if it's really a concern? Why not? I see no reason why not; please, be my guest. If you're suggesting that it's the charter of this mailing list to *fix* every freeness issue that is identified in a piece of software, you are mistaken. In particular, prozilla seems a particularly silly piece of software to jump to the defense of, since it has RC security holes and doesn't look like it's coming anywhere close to shipping with sarge. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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