On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 05:54:35PM +0300, Harri Järvi wrote: [...] > The problem is that the README in linuxsampler says the following thing: > > "This software is distributed under the GNU General Public License (see > COPYING file), and may not be used in commercial applications without > asking the authors for permission." I agree that this is inconsistent as written, but I think it's likely that upstream meant to write "proprietary" instead of "commercial". Simply explaining the difference to them should be enough to make them change the wording. See this essay for an explanation of the difference: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/words-to-avoid.html#Commercial > In addition there's a conflict between linuxsampler's aim to be an > opensource software, and the license used. Restricting commercial use > makes the software nonopensource by OSI definition and nonfree by Free > Software Foundation's Free Software definition. I think upstream only meant to make it clear to developers of proprietary software that they need to ask for a special license if they don't want to follow the GPL. Regards, -- Göran Weinholt <weinholt@debian.org> Debian developer, sysadmin, netadmin
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