On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 08:58:25PM -0400, Zephaniah E. Hull wrote: > On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 10:13:01PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > Keep it mind what DFSG 6 literally says: > > > > No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor > > > > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the > > program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not > > restrict the program from being used in a business, or from > > being used for genetic research. > > > > Strictly speaking, if you restrict people in a certain field of endeavor > > from *modifying* or *distributing* the work, you're not violating the > > letter of DFSG 6. > > So you are saying that a license that says something along the lines of: > 'you may use this program in any way, the Debian project may distribute > this program in any way it sees fit, however no one else may distribute > this program in any manner for any reason' > Would be perfectly alright as far as DFSG 6 goes? That's correct. > I would argue that distributing is a form of use. You could argue that, but many licenses take what I would interpret as a contrary position: (GNU GPL) Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). > (Yes, this license would violate 1, 5, and 8 even if 6 is fine, but it > makes the point.) I have no problem with Debian interpreting DFSG 6 more broadly that it is written, to include all of the freedoms that we normally talk about: use, modification, copying, and distribution of modified or unmodified copies. In fact, I would encourage that interpretation as it is clearly consonant with the spirit of the DFSG, and I don't know that any package has ever been permitted into main that had a license contrary to this spirit but compliant with the letter of DFSG 6. Just one example why I think we (Debian) need the freedom to amend the DFSG, "foundational document" or not. -- G. Branden Robinson | The best place to hide something is Debian GNU/Linux | in documentation. branden@debian.org | -- Ethan Benson http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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