Anthony Towns [aj@azure.humbug.org.au] wrote: > On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 06:49:59PM -0600, Bob McElrath wrote: > > Richard Braakman [dark@xs4all.nl] wrote: > > > On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 05:37:40PM -0600, Bob McElrath wrote: > > > GPL section 6, when talking about distributing the program, says > > > "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' > > > exercise of the rights granted herein." > > I'll go ahead and argue that unrestraind usage is not a "right granted" > > within the GPL. > > AIUI (and IANAL) it doesn't have to be: copyright only restricts people > making copies of a program, not using it. AIUI? I'm not familiar with that one. (as I understand it?) And you've hit the nail on the head...I'm trying to separate the usage license (LICENSE) from the copying license (COPYING = GPL), which one ought to be able to do. Am I the first to try this? > It's probably possible to contract out of this, so that the users give > up their rights to use the program however they choose once they have > a copy, but this has to be in return for something. So you could say > something like "You may only distribute this program if you don't use > it for designing weapons to hurt baby seals" or something like that, > but other than that, even as the author of the program, you don't get > to dictate how anyone might use it. Well, my license is essentially that (or intended to be at any rate). A contract. Granted, it's an icky click-wrap license (and not even that, since I have no way of knowing that the user has even *seen* the license -- indeed, if they get it from debian they probably won't see it). The idea being that if some big company, school district, etc. decides to deploy FilterProxy on a large scale, filtering other people's content, they *will* read the license, and decide...hey, we can't do this... (hopefully). What any individual does with it, for himself is his own business. > > > The next statement, "Any work derived from FilterProxy must include > > > this License in addition to the GPL", would also be a "further > > > restriction" under section 6. > > Again, if usage is not a right "granted herein", then requiring the > > secondary license is not a restriction on those rights. > > That's a restriction on the right to distribute and modify it, not usage > though, fwiw. See my last post. Is the license part of the software, and therefore, covered by its copright? > Usually usage restrictions are taken as making a program non-free; > so FilterProxy's license fails DFSG 6: it discriminates against people > trying to transparently remove swear words from web pages, eg. Yes, it does. ;) I'm not arguing that FilterProxy shouldn't be in non-free, I'm just trying to make sure I've got all my t's crossed and my i's dotted WRT my license. If debian-legal doesn't want to entertain my exploration of the GPL, let me know... ;) But I thought it would be an appropriate forum. Thanks, -- Bob Bob McElrath (rsmcelrath@students.wisc.edu) Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics
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