Re: libcwd in Debian unstable

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

"Paul Wise" <pabs@debian.org> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 4:11 AM, Carlo Wood <carlo@alinoe.com> wrote:
> 
> >  Author, copyright holder, maintainer, tired of this, and all what not,
> 
> Do you mind if I ask why you chose the QPL instead of a DFSG-free licence?

According to the FSF, the Q Public License version 1.0 is a free
software license:

    Q Public License (QPL), Version 1.0

    This is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible
    with the GNU GPL. It also causes major practical inconvenience,
    because modified sources can only be distributed as patches.

    <URL:http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/>

Debian's wiki, on the DFSGLicense page, categorises QPLv1 in the
"unsettled" section:

    The QPL is not GPL-compatible, which, regardless of one's opinion
    about the license's DFSG-freeness, poses a major practical problem
    for any code licensed under the QPL that is reused elsewhere in
    conjunction with code under the GNU GPL. This makes the QPL alone
    a particularly poor choice of license for a library.

    <URL:http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#head-32008704067079bbbb028804a5dc10bb340d4086>

All that aside, though, if Carlo Wood is "tired of all this", he would
be best advised to choose to license his work under terms whose
freedom status *is* settled.

-- 
 \       "I filled my humidifier with wax. Now my room is all shiny."  |
  `\                                                  -- Steven Wright |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney