[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: mdnsresponder: Wrong license



Jeff,

Above and beyond the issue of distributing code without proper license
notices, the APSL 2.0 is not, in the opinion of many (and AFAICT, according
to the consensus of the debian-legal mailing list), a free license under the
DFSG.  Although there's been extensive discussion about *which* points of
the license are actually DFSG problems, the questionable clauses are
multiple:

- The copyright license is terminated if you attempt to defend your patent
  rights against Apple.
- The license requires you to publish any local modifications if you deploy
  public services based on the Covered Code, which discriminates against a
  field of endeavour.
- The license includes a choice of venue clause forcing all licensees to
  accept the jurisdiction of the Northern District of California, which is
  discriminatory against persons located outside this district by exposing
  them to unequal legal expense.

Again, while the question of which parts of the license (if any) fail the
DFSG is still somewhat open, the fact is that this license imposes a number
of restrictions on the licensee which are not present in more traditional
Free Software licenses.  Now that it's known that this package is licensed
under the APSL and not under a BSD license, I believe it's best to remove
mdnsresponder from the archive until such a time as it's made available
under a different license or there's a clear consensus that the APSL 2.0 is
a DFSG-free license.

If you agree with this assessment but don't have time to clean the source
tree, let me know and I can take a look at doing this for you.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: