Re: License advice
On Mon, Apr 27, 1998 at 09:40:33PM -0400, storm@gate.net wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
>
> > And now my comments:
> > 1) He does not mention that selling is allowed. So you are not allowed to
> > sell it.
>
> Last time I heard, "redistribute freely" was taken to mean that you were
> free to distribute it however you like (including by selling it)
Well, I'll not comment further on it, as I'm not a lawyer. If it is so as
you said, this is probably not a problem.
> > 2) He does not mention that you are allowed to redistribute the software
> > after altering and marking as in 3, so you are not allowed to redistribute
> > altered version.
>
> "Altered versions" must be "plainly marked" and "must not be
> misrepresented as being the original software". It doesn't make too much
> sense to require someone to mark modifications if they can't redistribute
> them.
I never said that it would make sense, this is the reason why I would
suggest the author to choose the license mnore carefully if I had to cope
with such a license. I've seen worse licenses, though, and quite a lot that
have been more silly.
The other comments state the difference in copyright law, if everything is
forbidden that is not explicitely allowd or if everything that is not
explicitely forbidden is allowed.
We have the Bern convention in europe which specifies the former. I don't
know about the letter, and would assume the worst to be on the safe side.
In general, I prefer to have a license that does not leave any ambiguity or
interpretation on my side.
Marcus
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