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Re: Proposed: Debian's Five Freedoms for Free Works



On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 02:54, Henning Makholm wrote: 
> Scripsit Adam Warner <lists@consulting.net.nz>
> 
> > A guideline of privacy could be read as a positive obligation that
> > DFSG-free software licences protect against information disclosure.
> 
> How about, instead of "information disclosure", to speak about "forced
> communication" or something like that? As I see it, the freedoms we
> are speaking about here could all be described by
> 
>     It must be possible for me to enjoy the freedoms without
>     communicating with anybody else but those whom I voluntarily
>     decide to distribute the software to.
> 
> This would essentially equal the desert island / dissident test, but
> without the fancy narrative.

Why should I have to communicate with anyone, even in a situation of
copyleft code distribution? And how does your proposal proscribe the
limits of information disclosure when one does voluntarily decide to
distribute the software?

If mandatory information disclosure should at most require (in a
situation of distributing a derivative work based upon copyleft code)
the source for the derived work then one can distribute this information
at the time of binary distribution and the recipient cannot demand or
expect any form of communication. And the recipient may be an ephemeral,
unidentifiable anonymous downloader who the distributor hasn't
personally decided to communicate with.

So communication isn't the root issue. The root issue is the extent of
one's information disclosure obligation (at the point of distribution).
If one satisfies this level of information disclosure then no
communication is required. But of course if the information disclosure
isn't initially sufficient (in a copyleft situation) then it has to be
put right through some additional form of communication or distribution.

If limits on the forms of mandatory information disclosure are important
then we can simplify no further than setting out those limits (for a
licence to be considered DFSG free).

Regards,
Adam



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