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Re: Is the Nokia Open Source License DFSG compliant?



On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 03:53:18AM +1200, Adam Warner wrote:
> I believe Andrew's suggestion that we should consider software under
> this licence on a case by case basis is not appropriate. The Debian
> project expects to have the same rights to distribute modified software
> as the original software.

Well, offhand I have one brightline test in mind that we can apply
here:

If the copyright holder doesn't hold any patents covering the work,
there's no problem.

In this case, all the patent-related clauses are a no-op. When there
actually _are_ patents involved... that's tricky. I'm not sure about
that yet.

Given the language style in which this license is written, I'm fairly
sure it's a generic one emitted by a legal deparment who was given
instructions not to jeopardise potential patent claims. As such, it's
entirely possible that they might intend to create some DFSG-free
things with it - but it's also likely they intend to create some
things which aren't.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
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