Re: Leadership, effects on Debian and open source community
On Sun, Nov 29, 1998 at 12:49:33AM -0500, Will Lowe wrote:
> > ones in the license agreement. A "do anything you want with this"
> > license is certainly DFSG-free, but if the software is the RSAREF library
> > and you can't license the patent from RSA commercially without a fee,
> > then the software isn't _really_ free.
>
> Woah, woah. We've got to be careful to maintain the distinction here
> between (free == $0) and (free == liberated). The code can be liberated
> (;cough "Open") even if it's illegal to use it (which it would be if you
> didn't pay the fee). RSAREF fails the current DFSG under the "no
> restrictions on fields of endevour" bit -- it's free ($0) unless your use
> is commercial.
Uh, if it's illegal to use some code, it's pretty non-liberated in my books.
It may, however, be "open" :)
> I'm not clear what we should do about cases such as these. It's ludicrous
> to expect that anything patented is going to be completely free -- the
> patent system was set up mostly to allow the patent owner to collect
> money, so anyone who's taken the trouble to file for the patent is
> obviously going to be looking for cash.
Yup. But do we include it in main (assuming we legally can)?
Avery
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