Re: New CUPS license violates DFSG 6?
Scripsit Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net>
> Previously Peter Makholm wrote:
> > I think there are consensus for allowing positive discrimination.
> There is? That would be a mighty slippery slope.
If not consensus, then at least there is precedence. As long as the
license gives everyone without qualification the rights asked for by
the DFSG we usually have had no problems with licenses that give
*additional* rights to some specified group (e.g., left-handed
redheads).
The reasoning is that it would be absurd to call license A free and
license B non-free if every recipient has at least as much freedom
with license B as he has with license A.
What I think we have not discussed fully is cases where the license
stipulates that derived works must also be licenced with extra rights
for left-handed redheads. In that case the license would discriminate
someone who wanted to contribute to the development of the software
without giving any extraordinary support to redheads.
In this particular case it doesn't look like the extended rights
are viral in this setting, so there ought to be no problem here.
(But I haven't looked up the context of the language that was quoted
some articles ago, so I may be wrong).
--
Henning Makholm "Det er jo svært at vide noget når man ikke ved det, ikke?"
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