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Re: The BitTorrent Open Source License



Le mercredi 09 mars 2005 à 10:01 -0800, Josh Triplett a écrit :
> The issues I see related to Freeness are:
> 
> * The requirement to keep source code available for 12 months, even if
> you are no longer distributing the binary, and even if you distributed
> the source code along with the binary.

I think this is only poor wording. The code must available, but the
previous sentence says it can be either on the same media or on the
internet. With a strict interpretation, that means it must be available
for 12 months on the internet, or, if on distributed on e.g. a disk, it
must not self-destroy during this period.

> * The requirement to maintain a LEGAL file.

I don't think this one is really a problem; it's similar to the GPL
saying you must mark your modifications as such.

> * The choice of venue clause.

Right, this one is much more obnoxious, and it is also probably the one
the author is the less susceptible to fix.

> I also have a suggestion for how to deal with these issues.  Given that
> the license change is recent (two days ago), why don't we just point out
> to upstream that the license is not GPL-compatible, which would pose a
> problem for anyone building GPLed frontends to BitTorrent or other
> software that builds on BitTorrent (such software already exists), and
> request that he dual-license BitTorrent under this license and the GPL?
>  We could point out that Mozilla, previously under the MPL, decided to
> dual-license (and later tri-license) for the same reason.  This will
> prevent us from having to go into detail on these license issues, which
> are harder to explain (and harder to convince people that they aren't
> just Debian ranting, which seems to be a far-too-common opinion :( ).

Sounds like a good idea.
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin.mouette@ens-lyon.org
`. `'                        joss@debian.org
  `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom

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