Re: What does "free" means for a licence or a standard? (Was: Intent to package xmemos
On Tue, Mar 30, 1999 at 11:51:05AM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>
> Remember the discussion on debian-legal a few days ago about the W3C standards?
> It makes sense to limit modifications on a standard. At the very least, if you
> modify and redistribute the GPL, it makes sense to force you to use another
> name... which the GPL does not require for software.
OTOH, there are btter ways to protect the integrity of a standard and still
make it modificable... requirement to chnage the name, "version number",
append a prefix, remove a non-techincal introduction.
If posix would be free, we had better documentation for our system.
If ansi would be free, we had better docs for our C compiler.
And so on.
However, the reason the GPL is not banned is probably because we make a
courtesy to the copyright holder. We don't want to offend them by removing
their license from the system.
Furthermore, the GPL is our legal protection why we are allowed to include
it in Debian, so it makes sense to ship it with the res of the system.
Although I have a strong opinion about documentation and even standards, I
think the restrictions should not be extended to copyright documents.
But I invite everyone to implement a copyright construction kit, a Gtk app,
which lets you build your copyright by Drag'n'Drop. A small portion on
freeness, of copyleft, a but of restricted warranty and a non-commercial
clause :)
Certainly, three indicators should be made, which are updated automatically:
"Freeness, Proprietaryness and Legalese".
Marcus
--
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