Re: FWD: Analog licence violates DFSG
On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 12:07:22PM -0700, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, David Starner wrote:
> > The DFSG is designed to be an objective standard.
>
> Not really, it's way too broad for that. If it were completely objective
> there'd be no debate about whether a given license violated it or not.
There will always be fuzzy lines and misinterpretations. The real world
is not math. But the DFSG was designed so that someone could take a
license and see whether Debian will accept it as free, without polling
the Debian developers. "I think that's a good license" should come into it
little, if at all.
Frankly, even if it were completely objective, there would still be debate.
I've seen quite a few rephrased MIT licenses cross debian-legal, with people
wondering whether they were DFSG free, despite the unambiguity.
> > Anyway, if this is acceptable, then can someone put in a clause about
> > breaking God's law invalidates the license? I think pretty much all
> > the arguments in this thread for the clause would also apply to such a
> > clause.
>
> No, because copyright law is something that's enforced by a jurisdiction,
> that same jurisdiction (presumably, though the license was unclear about
> this) whose other laws the license is mandating you follow.
Actually, no. Copyright law would be federal (and internation) jurisdiction,
whereas the license forces you to follow local laws too. So this license
could force a federal judge to rule on local laws. Ugly.
I don't understand how this would apply, anyway.
> Copyright law
> is not enforced by God.
So? God's law is still something you have to follow anyway, so including it
in the license is a no-op (or so some have argued.)
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
http/ftp: dvdeug.dhis.org
And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects called the human race.
Lost in space, lost in time, and meaning.
-- RHPS
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