Re: GPL v3 Draft 3- text and comments
Francesco Poli wrote:
Clause 5d in GPLv3draft3 is basically unchanged with respect to previous
drafts. It's worse than the corresponding clause 2c in GPLv2... :-(
It's an inconvenience and border-line with respect to freeness.
Actually this clause restricts how I can modify what an interactive
program does when run. It mandates a feature that I *must* implement in
*any* interactive interface of my modified work. It's very close to
place an unacceptable restriction on modification. What is more awkward
is that it seems that when a non-interactive work is modified so that it
becomes an interactive work, the modifier is *compelled* to implement
these features in *any* newly created interactive interface...
I would like to see clause 5d dropped entirely.
I agree that it's not very good. Given that persuading the FSF to drop
the clause entirely at this late stage is unlikely, can we come up with
a form of wording to suggest which at least makes it no worse than GPLv2?
I would be happy to see all these "permissions to add restrictions"
entirely dropped from Section 7.
===> not a Freeness issue, but a great loss, since, if this mechanism is
kept in the final GPLv3 text, GPL-compatibility will no longer be a
DFSG-compliance guarantee... :-(
Can you give an example of a DFSG-non-compliant term that could be
introduced under section 7?
b. requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or
author attributions in source or object code forms of material added
by you to a covered work; or
:::: Kills copyleft: are these the cousins of GFDL's Invariant Sections?
What exactly is a "reasonable legal notice"? What exactly is an "author
attribution"? It seems that these terms are not defined anywhere in the
license. I'm concerned that they could be interpreted in a broad sense
and allow people to take a GPLv3'd work and add some sort of invariant
long text that nobody will ever be able to remove or modify...
I can't see any judge with a decent grasp of English or the notion of a
"legal notice" or "author attribution" permitting the attachment of the
GNU Manifesto to a work under this clause. Can you give a concrete
example of a problematic situation you see?
BTW, does this section make GPLv3 compatible with the license of OpenSSL?
13. Use with the Affero General Public License.
:::: Kills copyleft: compatibility with a yet unknown license
This section introduces a form of compatibility with a license that is
yet unreleased and thus possibly non-free: the Affero General Public
License, version 2. The AfferoGPL v1 is, in my opinion, a non-free
license, due to its clause 2(d). I won't restate all the reasons for my
conclusions (more details in
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/rt/readsay.html?filename=gplv3-draft-3&id=1663).
As a consequence, I have few hopes that the forthcoming version 2 of
the AfferoGPL will be a free license.
Being compatible with an unknown (and thus possibly non-free) license
destroys the copyleft mechanism of the GPLv3.
"Destroys" is a bit strong. This clause is a permission to link;
therefore, as I read it, the GPLv3 copyleft weakens to an "LGPL"-style
copyleft in the case of linking with the Affero GPL. Each bit of code
remains under its own license.
Gerv
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