Re: analog copyright take 2

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On Mon, 1 Sep 1997, Joey Hess wrote:

> I spoke with the author about analog's copyright, and he had this to say:
> 
> > Thanks for your mail, Joey. Let me say first that I'm not attached to my        
> > Licence as it now stands. I know what concepts I want to get across, but        
> > if you can think of a better wording, that's fine.                              
>                                                                                 
> > As far as your first point is concerned, I'm happy that saying "everything      
> > on this CD is free software" is good enough to satisfy the licence. I wanted    
> > to allow distributors to sell the CD, but make sure that users knew that        
> > they were paying for the physical medium, producers' time etc. and not the      
> > program itself. Isn't this a problem that everyone faces? Otherwise a           
> > reseller could charge a commercial-software rate, and claim if challenged       
> > that it was a realistic charge for their time: the users should be able         
> > to assess this for themselves beforehand.

It sound like the author wants some restriction on the price that can be
charged when obtaining his software. It was my understanding that there
was no such restriction on "Free Software". One can charge any fee at all
for delivering such software. The buyer is, of course free to go to a
cheaper source.

> 
> Are debian cd resellers required to say that debian is free software? If not, 
> what change can be made to the copyright below to allow analog into debian 
> and still keep the author's wishes clear?
> 
I don't think the license suggests that the resellers would need to
declare anything beyond "Debian" to declare it "free" since SPI goes out
of its way to advertise the fact that Debian is "Free Software".

Luck,

Dwarf
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