Re: Is this a free license?

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Jim Penny <jpenny@debian.org> writes:

> So, does that not make qmail free?  There is no problem in distributing
> the unchanged tarball, and we are, after all, simply distributing a 
> patchset that modifies it to support FHS.

Two important differences:

1) Qmail prohibits unapproved patches; Unicode does not.  Unicode
   welcomes modification of the data they provide ("extraction",
   remember), qmail prohibits it.

2) A qmail binary can only be distributed if compiled from the
   approved qmail source.  A unicode-implementing program (or "program
   that uses data exctracted from Unicode") contains no such
   restriction, you can implement part of Unicode, you can use the
   data to implement something totally contrary to the spirit of
   Unicode, you can do what you want with it.  Qmail, no deal.

Thomas