Re: QPL: non-free?

[Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net>]

On Tue, 2002-08-20 at 20:12, Branden Robinson wrote:
> IMO, it is against the spirit of Free Software to require the assignment
> of your intellectual property rights in anything for the freedom to
> modify someone else's intellectual property.

[...]

> I don't think we would hold (3)b as DFSG-free if it said:

[pay $100 if you modify]
 
> Agreed?  Is the intellectual property of a Debian Developer, or anyone
> else, not worth anything?

Regardless of what "intellectual property" is worth (I find even the phrase
distasteful, but it's hard to avoid it in such discussions), requiring
assignment of a completely free license for the new code to the original
developer is clearly not in violation of the DFSG.

While requiring people to give $100 discriminates against people who
don't have $100, or who can't get (american, I assume) dollars for
whatever reason, requiring freedom of copyright doesn't discriminate.
There's nothing to discriminate against - you're not giving up anything
of your own, you're giving somebody else something extra. (You might say
"it discriminates against people who don't want to do 'free work' for
$CORP," but I argue that this case is no different from the GPL
requiring you do 'free work' for the free software community.)

I currently see no case to say this fails the DFSG.

-- 
Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> <drew@debian.org>

"This particular group of cats is mostly self-herding." -- Bdale Garbee