On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:44:43PM -0700, Kevin Rosenberg wrote: > Also, is the requirement to change the name also non-DFSG compatible? I forgot to answer this point. There has been some debate recently over *precisely* what DFSG 4 means (see the archives of debian-legal regarding the LaTeX Project Public License), so I'll offer you the most conservative interpretation, which if followed will pretty much ensure no DFSG 4 problems: "The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software." This means that you can require that the name or version number carried by the work may be compelled to differ from those used by the work as distributed by the copyright holder. The "name of the work" and "version number" are legal concepts and not a reference to any particular technological mechanism. That is, a DFSG-free license can require a human being must be able to discern that the name or version number of the work has changed in some way from the original, but it may neither mandate the exact nature of the change (as long as the fact of a change is clear and unambiguous), nor may it compel the implementation of a particular technological mechanism to communicate this change. In other words, you cannot insist that a package name change, that a file name change, that a version number add the string "-FNORD", or that software mechanisms which "handshake" with each other based on data that act like names or version numbers must reflect the change in a way directly comprehensible by humans (or at all, for that matter). The rationale behind what some people have characterized as a hard-line interpretation of DFSG 4 is to make sure that Debian and Debian users are free to implement compatbility mechanisms with any particular piece of software, and fork a piece of DFSG-free software to do it. Such compatiblity mechanisms are necessarily technological, such as the name of a package (consider "Provides: foobar"), or the versioning declared by a shared ELF object. However, this doesn't mean that modifiers of works whose licenses mandate name or version number changes can just ignore the requirement. Far from it; it's still part of the copyright license and the penalties for willful infringement of copyright can be stiff. It's a good idea to note the change, certainly in the debian/copyright file, and possibly in other places like the package description, a README file, a human-readable usage message, a manual page, and so forth. Make sure the change is noticeable to human beings in as many ways as you think are reasonably necessary to cover your ass legally, in other words. ObFullDisclosure: Some people on debian-legal have a considerably different interpretations of DFSG 4, and feel that a license can mandate not only the content but the mechanism of a change in name or version number without violating the clause. File renaming requirements were at the heart of the contention over the LaTeX Project Public License. -- G. Branden Robinson | Any man who does not realize that Debian GNU/Linux | he is half an animal is only half a branden@debian.org | man. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Thornton Wilder
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