Re: is this free?
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:
> This license is said to be OSI certified Open Source, but I'd like a second
> opinion. It's too much legalese for me to deal with this morning:
> http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/license/
There's a general "you must monitor our website" clause. It could be
construed discrimination against people who have no net connection.
Whether not having a net connection is a field of endeavor is
doubtful, but the very presence of the clause seems to imply that
AT&T reserves the right to unilaterally change the license terms.
There's a clause saying that if I create and distribute a patch
(modified sources are not permitted at all) I must tell AT&T
about it. Such clauses are not usually considered DFSG-free.
And .. tadah: there's a clause that revokes the license as soon
as "notice of a non-frivolous claim by a third party relating to
the Source Code or Capsule is posted on the Website". That is
manifestly nonfree.
There's a "you must comply with U.S. export laws" clause.
It wouldn't surprise me if they got the OSI certification nevertheless.
> Interestingly, there is this accompnying binary license:
which is not free at all, but I don't think that is directly
relevant as the main license in itself offers permission to
distribute original and modified binaries.
--
Henning Makholm "You propose to avoid dying? I will be
interested to hear the method you plan for this endeavour."
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