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Re: PHPNuke license



Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote:

> What this restriction is much *more* like is the Zope web bug ("all
> pages rendered with Zope have to have our little image on it"), against
> which Bruce Perens successfully campaigned some years ago.

Perhaps, but the Zope license required it explicitely, while the PHPNuke
author is relying on the GPL section 2c to enforce it.

> But the license is non-DSFG-free mostly because it makes a restriction
> on what types of functional changes can be made (the decision to spew a
> copyright notice through a socket is functional in a way that a comment
> or blurb in a piece of documentation is not), violating DFSG 3.
> 
> We do implicitly accept one narrowly-drawn exception to DFSG 3, and that
> is the GNU GPL's 2c).  However, PHPNuke's restriction is not the GNU
> GPL's 2c, and I think have every right to object to a proliferation of
> unremovable spew in what should be Free software, and web content whose
> copyright in and of itself belongs to other people.
> 
> I'll note that the GNU GPL's 2c), for instance, does not mandate that
> the announcement of the copyright notice and warranty disclaimer be
> placed into files output or processed by the software, which is what
> PHPNuke is doing.

As John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

: Additionally, there seems to be input from the FSF here:
: http://phpnuke.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4947

So the FSF unfortunately disagree with you on that point.

Maybe they didn't understand the finer points?  Can you imagine if LaTeX
added a copyright notice at the bottom of every page it created?

Peter



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