On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 01:12:06PM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote: > So, in fact, both of these licenses are non-free, as they contain clauses > that can be used, and will be considered non-free. It is software that is or is not DFSG-free, not licenses. The simple fact is, a work licensed under version 1.1 of the GNU FDL with no Cover Texts and no Invariant Sections is clearly and plainly DFSG-free. A work licensed under GNU FDL, version 1.1, which consists entirely of "Invariant Sections" either has no license or is wholly unmodifiable. Most people on debian-legal agree that this renders the work DFSG-free. You can call the GNU FDL "free" or "non-free" due to either or both of the above. Which you decide is far less important to Debian than how the GNU FDL is actually applied to works in real life. > I find it ... foolish to declare a license to be free IFF some clauses of > the license are not exercised. Using this language, any proprietary > license becomes free as long as none of the proprietary sections are > inforced by the author... I find it ... surprising that you're unfamiliar with the issues surrounding the Artistic License and its "reasonable" copying fee. Actually, since you usually opine on issues before educating yourself on them, I'm not surprised. :) > The license is a complete text. It is either free or it isn't. Under that logic, the GNU GPL is non-free because it is not a modifiable document. Debian, however, takes a pragmatic approach to license documents; we care about licenses only insofar as they apply to actual software that we package. We also care about licenses as they are enforced by the copyright holder, not about how they could have been exercised by the copyright holder. That said, Debian does occasionally serve to act in an advisory capacity to people seeking to adopt license terms that express their desires clearly. > Selective editing creates a new license that may or may not actually > exist. *shrug* Then your beef is with the people who author such licenses. The GNU FDL and OPL both have optional parts that the copyright holder can elect not to exercise. For that matter, the GNU GPL does too. You can always add a rider to the license, for instance by permitting your work to link against an old version of the Qt library. > If this is the kind of logic that is being used on the -legal mailing > list, I'm glad not to expose myself to such nonsense. If this is the kind of "logic" you're going to try to bring to -legal, perhaps the list is better off without your participation. -- G. Branden Robinson | I have a truly elegant proof of the Debian GNU/Linux | above, but it is too long to fit branden@debian.org | into this .signature file. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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