Re: Handwaving licence
On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 05:22:42PM -0800, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 01:16:07PM -0500, William T Wilson wrote:
> > > > Please feel free to distribute it any way you want.
> > > > However, it would be nice if you could leave a reference to my
> > > > web site and email.
> >
> > Probably it isn't free because it doesn't expressly permit modification.
>
> IANAL but that text clearly states "distribute it any way you want".
>
> Indirect proof that modifications are permitted follows:
>
> Temporarily assume that modifications are not allowed to be
> distributed. We are given that it is permissible to distribute
> the software in any way the distributor wants. Absent
> modification, the package will be the same (Transitive property).
> Since modifications are not permitted, there is only one way
> to legally distribute the package, which is without as provided by
> upstream. But this contradicts the fact that a distributor is
> allowed to distribute the package in any desired way, since all
> but one form of distribution (the upstream distribution) would be
> the result of a modification. Therefore, our assumption is false
> and modifications are allowed to be distributed. QED.
his language was far too imprecise to draw any real conclusions.
I take it you are interpreting "distribute it any way you want" to
mean, "distribute it in any form" ? Even this does not mean you
could modify content and distribute, perhaps he means you can
turn it into an .hqx archive, or perhaps he means "distribute
it by any means you want",
i.e. NFS, rsync, snailmail, horse drawn carriage.
personally I think he really doesnt care, but you must get explicit
permission first! there is no good reason not to, will debian suffer
immensely from waiting days, weeks?.
You cannot go around reading things the way you want, and consider
that to be the only interpretation.
IANAL.
--
Brian Russo <brusso@phys.hawaii.edu> GPG ID: 54D81666
Debian/GNU OS: http://www.debian.org <wolfie@debian.org>
magnus frater spectat te - encrypt whenever possible
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