On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 07:19:54PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: > > The GPL can be a work, but we are using it (primarily) in the > > context of a license, as opposed to a mere work. Like copyright > > statements, valid licenses[1] are legal documents which cannot be > > modified by anyone save the copyright holder of a work. > > You can't modify the GPL to create a new, derivative license because > the FSF say you can't. The FSF actually goes both ways on this issue.[1][2][3] [But I'm willing to assume in the context of this discussion that the license itself is unmodifiable.] > The first is a problem as far as DFSG-freedom is concerned, the > latter isn't. I'm arguing that it's a problem as far as the DFSG is concerned only when the license is included outside of its legal context. I can rather trivially form a set of tests to discriminate between such a license or copyright statement and any other part of a work in Debian. [If it is necessary, or the set of tests is not clear, I will gladly do so.] > Neither is a problem for Debian, unless you start insisting that > we're betraying our principles to even consider including anything > non-free no matter what it's form under pool/main. It is my understanding that the current form of Andrew's SC proposal would do just that for everything save valid licenses and copyright statements. > nor does it make a lot of sense to treat licenses differently when > they cover a free work to when they're included in the package for > other reasons (namely, they benefit users of the package in some > way, such as serving as an example). There is a large difference between a valid license and a chunk of text that happens to look like a license. I can personally think of a few dozen reasons why it would be usefull to be able to modify a chunk of text that happens to look like a license, but there is no way that I can modify the meaning of a valid license and have it remain valid. I presume that your position[4] is that there are a class of works to which it is not important to apply the DFSG to in addition to the valid licenses and copyright statements. While I personally disagree with this, could you (or someone else who holds this view) give an accounting of how we should discern between works to which we should apply the DSFG and works to which we should not? Don Armstrong 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00011.html 2: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOmitPreamble 3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL 4: As always, please correct me if I am mistaken. -- "It's not Hollywood. War is real, war is primarily not about defeat or victory, it is about death. I've seen thousands and thousands of dead bodies. Do you think I want to have an academic debate on this subject?" -- Robert Fisk http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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