Re: FWD: Analog licence violates DFSG
On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Joey Hess wrote:
> 1.Any action which is illegal under international or local law is forbidden by
> this licence. Any such action is the sole responsibility of the person
> committing the action.
>
> This provision of the licence blatently violates section 6 of
> the DFSG which states:
>
> 6.No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
> in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the
> program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic
> research.
I don't follow; maybe I'm just being dense, but section 1 seems like a
no-op to me, a cover-your-ass by the attorney who wrote it to cover the
case where a jurisdiction may decide that another clause in the license
contradicts some law somewhere, thus rendering the license void (in that
jurisdiction) or clearing the way for someone to get the author into legal
hot water. That clause is arguably a feeble insurance against that.
Maybe?
Oh, wait, unless you're interpreting this very broadly, that it's not just
the laws that apply to the copier within their specific jurisdiction, but
the union set of all laws everywhere are applied to everyone. The
language in the license is indeed sloppy, but I can't believe someone
would reasonably think that this was what was intended.
Even in that situation, though, it *still* doesn't violate DFSG #6, as
far as I can tell. On a stretch, those international or local laws may be
specific to an endeavor, but the license term is not.
Brian
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