Re: OSD && DFSG - different purposes - constructive suggestion!
David Turner <novalis@novalis.org> writes:
> But in order that users may evade the government's laws, Free Software
> must allow certain freedoms (although Thomas Bushnell and I may disagree
> on what they are).
>
> But the dissident test require licenses to allow every possible tactic
> for evading laws which restrict certain activities.
No. It simply says that the *software license* may not infringe my
copying of the license by attaching to it onerous conditions.
Sample onerous conditions:
1) Pay money.
2) Send your changes back always.
3) Pay money on request.
4) Send your changes back on request.
We already reject (1), (2), and (3). Why is (4) suddenly not rejected
as onerous? Perhaps because it wasn't realized that real people might
find it a real burden, as opposed to a trivial requirement.
As the case of Fred the Lawyer makes clear, however, there are real
people for which it is a real burden.
> For instance, consider a binary which is a game, unless it's called with
> the --dissident command-line option, in which case, it's DeCSS (or
> GPG). Were the source code to this game revealed, it would show clearly
> the nature of the program. But the gov't doesn't have time to reverse
> engineer the binaries (and anyway, DMCA2 prohibits it). They do have
> the time, however, to follow up on GPL (3)(b) offers. Can dissidents
> distribute binaries to everyone, and source code only to those they
> trust? Not according to many Free Software licenses.
Right. The dissident test does *not* require licenses to allow "every
possible tactic"; you have mischaracterized my objection quite
seriously.
Thomas
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