On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 10:03:00AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 11:01:16PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > > You never lose the right to modify. You lose the right to claim that a > > modified version is the certified one. I addressed this specifically in > > DFSG section 4:/ > > /The license may require derived works to carry a different name or > > version number from the original software./ > > At the time, there was an "Official" version of ABIWord sanctioned by > > ABISource, and any modified version would be unofficial and had to bear > > a different name, and DFSG #4 was written specifically to allow that > > sort of uses. This is certainly a form of certification. Indeed, Debian > > makes use of similar certification for its Official CD. > Indeed; however, IMO excerting the right to modify as defined by the > DFSG should never result in the loss of support, or other negative > consequences, because in that case you might as well not have it. This > type of certification does carry that kind of negative consequence. But this happens all the time in all kinds of situations (think Red Hat RHEL support vs. Fedora, or even users reporting bugs to the Debian BTS about backported packages), and is perfectly valid under the DFSG -- even if we don't want to be put in this situation by ISVs. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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