Re: please check new blitz license
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John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.Arizona.EDU> writes:
> 2. You may not charge a fee for distributing the Library
> (or portions of it) in source code form without specific prior
> written permission of the Copyright Holder.
>
> [snip]
>
> However, I think that they are not in conflict. It is just that the blitz
> license does not explicitly allow what is prohibited in the DFSG.
This provision violates DFSG points #5 "No Discrimination Against
Persons or Groups" and/or #6 "No Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavour", in that it places an additional condition on
redistribution in a commercial context. (I believe there are other
programs in non-free for precisely this reason.)
It might also be construed as violating the spirit of point #8
"License Must Not Be Specific To Debian" in light of point #7
"Distribution of License". The intent of point #8, it seems, is to
make sure that DFSG-free software is DFSG-free no matter what, no
extra permission required. Even if the "extra permission" amounts to
no more than a rubber-stamp and grants all the expected Open Source
rights, that is not enough ... the DFSG says, basically, that asking
individual permission is out of the question.
This seems a reasonable approach to take, because one of the useful
properties of the DFSG is that it can be used to distinguish software
that doesn't have any extra requirements for redistribution, no matter
how trivial. In other words, if everything in main is DFSG-free, it
is reasonable to just stamp main on a CD and sell it without checking
every license with a fine-toothed comb. Unless you want CD vendors to
have to do the same sort of package-by-package scrutiny for both main
and non-free, it is better to keep innocent-looking but thorny
conditions like this off of the software in main.
In my opinion, this one goes in non-free...
- --Rob
- --
Rob Tillotson N9MTB <robt@debian.org>
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