Re: Darwin?

[Filip Van Raemdonck <filipvr@xs4all.nl>]

CC: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

On Sat, Feb 26, 2000 at 06:54:20AM -0900,
Ethan Benson wrote:
> 
> RMS disagrees that Apple's licence is free.  I came to the same
> conclusion myself before i even came across this page:
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html
> 
> (and yes before you ask i have looked at the second version of the
> APSL)
> 

I wrote my message before I looked into the license (I'll tell in a
minute why). When I did read the license, I didn't really feel comfortable
as well, for the following reasons:

* The fact that it says that you have to announce to Apple any
modifications you make
* The fact that you have to do this even if you only use it internally,
not for R&D

I did this before I got your message, en when reading the page you sent
me, I'm not really sure on the way RMS interpretes the termination clause
- AFAICS you *can* fight patents yourself:
(last sentence of section 9.1)
"If Apple suspends ... nothing in this License shall be construed to
restrict You ... from independently negotiating for necessary rights ..."

I won't argue about the other two though.

All that aside, the OSD says it *is* an opensource license, and IIRC,
everything which complies with the OSD (except for QPL) should also be
DFSG-compliant, so technically it shouldn't be a problem to base a
distribution on this (even though I am not sure I'd still want to).

Regards,

Filip