On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Shaleh wrote:
shaleh>John, if a license does not give permission, it is assumed to deny
shaleh>permission. So buy not allowing distribution if you charge and not
Shaleh, I disagree. The BSD does not say anything positive about
many paragraphs in the DFSG. For instance it is silent on discrimination
against fields of endeavor. It says nothing about any exchange of money.
Notably, it does not require source code to be distributed, or to be made
available.
I think license issues are important. But taken together, the
GPL, BSD, and Artistic, and the DFSG can appear vague or contradictory. I
am not convinced that satisfactory answers can be found to many of these
questions by refering to these texts.
From the DFSG:
2.Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution
in source code as well as compiled form.
What does this mean ? That the source code must be re-distributed
if any part or binary is ? None of the licenses require distribution of
source code. Some require that it be made available. Perhaps this means
that the source code should be included in the Debian archives, but this
is not clear. And the DFSG is commonly refered to as a document by which
to judge licenses. If it is refering to what must go in the Debian
archives, then this notion is erroneous. As I mentioned, BSD allows
distribution of binaries with no mention of source code.
John
John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu>
Tucson,AZ http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lapeyre