Re: LPPL and non-discrimination

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Jonathan Fine <jfine@activetex.org>

> Now to the problem.  Debian guideline 5 states "The
> license must not discriminate against any person or
> group of persons."
> 
> The proposed LaTeX license defines the Current Maintainer.
> The license grants these person(s) privileges that are
> not granted to other licensees.

We have a clear tradition on d-l that the non-discrimination guidline
only means that there must be some free terms that apply to everyone.
It is not a problem of specific groups receive *more* freedom than the
norm, as long as everyone has the freedoms described by the DFSG. It
would be absurd to consider one license less free than another solely
because it gives more rights to a specific group.

Now, if the license requires me, if I modify the software, to give
those same extra rights to the specific group, we might have a
problem. But as far as I understand, this is not the case for the LPPL
draft - the last version I read in detail included explicit clauses
that allow me to use a narrower license for my modified version.

-- 
Henning Makholm                            "What a hideous colour khaki is."