On Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 07:52:33PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> Which of the following interpretations seems truer to the spirit of free
> software, which the DFSG is meant (in part) to communicate?:
>
> A) The originator of a project, or his or her designee, is the ultimate
> authority over that project, and any and all changes made to that project,
> even those not ultimately accepted, or accepted and later removed, become
> his (or hers).
>
> B) A project is a collaborative effort, and each substantial contributor to
> the project earns authorial status, and concomitant consideration.
I've found myself thinking on similar lines in the past: especially
this is where all the FooCorp Public Licenses tend to go off the rails,
insisting on how incredibly much more important FooCorp is than every
other contributor, and that they're privacy and intellectual property
is theirs and must be carefully protected, and who cares about any other
contributor anyway.
But on the other hand, there's a clause along the same lines (speaking
very generally) in the BSD license: everyone needs to protect the
University of California's reputation and name, who cares about anyone
else. [0]
I see the DFSG as guaranteeing minimal rights to everyone, basically the
ability to keep the code in the public and fix it and improve it. As long
as all this stuff is allowed, I don't think it really concerns the DFSG
if some people can do even more than this (the BSD license lets everyone
take the software away from the public and make proprietry improvements,
for example).
One possible way of looking at this would be to say that allowing some
people to make the software proprietry is discriminating against everyone
who isn't allowed to make the software proprietry (thus failing point 6).
By this way of looking at things, the MPL, NPL and QPL would probably fail
the DFSG, iirc. [1]
YMMV, etc.
Cheers,
aj
[0] At least, I assume "its contributors" refers to the University's
contributors, not the code's.
[1] Slashdot headline: "Debian Supreme Court takes activist view:
reads implied rights into DFSG". Well, maybe not. It'd be entertaining
to see how people would take deciding the QPL isn't DFSG-free when
Qt's already GPLed... :)
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and working code.''
-- Dave Clark
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