Re: Open Source-ness of ircII
On Sun, May 24, 1998 at 01:08:40PM +1000, matthew green wrote:
>
> IRC II is copyright (c) 1990 by Michael Sandrof. You have the
> right to copy, compile, and maintain this software. You also
> have the right to make modifcations to this code for local use
> only.
> while i can't change this text, i can provide you with a fairly
> accurate description of the *intended* usage of that. it meant
> that someone could make changes locally and *not* distribute
> them if they so desired, not that they could *not* distribute
> their changes.
First of all, thanks for your prompt response:-) It seems that most
people read this in the sense of a limitation, not that you are
permitted to not distribute.. I think the assumption is taht if you
have the code, you can do what you wish in the privacy of your own
home.
> in any case, i can not change the text of the license as michael
> sandrof has not been around for at least 6 years.
Yes, I think what some people would like to have is a more concrete
decleration of the programs lineage? I'm not entirely sure, because
I'm not sure how that should read or what it should say to make people
happy. To me it looks ok as it is.. maybe a license that is known to
do what you want might spell out things more clearly... The BSD and X
licenses seem to be sort of similiar in spirit to what you want..
Maybe some of the others on debian-devel could contribute to this
discussion? I have been taking the point of view that ircII is free,
as it seems to have been freely taken, modified and distributed (epic,
bitchx, etc..) without any problems.
Anyway, thanks for your time,
--
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org
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