On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 10:29:32PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> If it is really Larry's intention to not discriminate against
> distributors of GNU/Linux, he's going to have to refine his license
> somewhat, because the current text clearly allows him to go after any
> {Debian,Red Hat,Mandrake,...} developer that he decides should not be
> using his product.
It wasn't my intention to raise the issue of Debian developers qua
Debian developers so much as the fact that a great many of us do work on
multiple free software projects, and some of us work for companies that
do so as well.
Even assuming that Debian can't be construed as an "employer" under the
terms of the BK gratis license, that still leaves many Debian developers
with an awful lot of opportunities to be regarded as infringing.
In many cases you may not even *know* that your employer has some people
(maybe contractors) in some division based in another country working
on, say, Subversion -- or a revision control system intended to be
proprietary to the company. If you attempt use the gratis license on BK
for work on the Linux kernel in your free time, you're in violation.
The clause in question is extremely broad. It has no requirement of
intentionality on the part of the Licensee, and what is regarded as
competition is left wholly to BitMover's discretion. Sure, that
discretion has to be "reasonable", but if you and BitMover disagree
about what's "reasonable", you either have to pay for a license to make
the issue go away, or litigate it in court.
In short, circumstances outside your knowledge and beyond your control
can place you in violation of the BitKeeper gratis license. I would be
unwilling to use the software under these terms, and I expect some other
Debian developers may also wish to be careful.
I simply want my fellow developers to understand the risk they undertake
when they use BitKeeper, assuming the license is enforceable as written.
--
G. Branden Robinson | The best place to hide something is
Debian GNU/Linux | in documentation.
branden@debian.org | -- Ethan Benson
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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