On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Richard Stallman wrote: > I, and, to a large extent, other members of this list, are concerned > that, beyond the non-trivial freedom aspects, texts under the GFDL > will begin to suffer the same fate that code licensed under the > 4-clause BSD license has. > > This is an illuminating comparison, because the practical problems of > the GFDL (and I won't claim there are none) are basically of the same > kind (though of a lower magnitude) than those of the 4-clause BSD > license. Sortof. It's more noticable though, because the 3rd clause of the 4-clause BSD license only comes into effect in advertising materials which specifically mention features of code under the 4-clause license. The invariant section compounding of the GFDL occurs in every form that the documentation exists in or is distributed in. > None of us have ever considered saying that the 4-clause BSD license > is non-free, or suggesting that programs under such licenses should > be removed from Debian main. Some of us actually have claimed (or at least have been close to claiming) that 4-clause BSD licensed programs shouldn't be packaged in main. I'm not particularly enthused about the 3rd clause of the BSD license myself, as it causes all sorts of nasty practical problems, and frankly can make talking about features of your program and/or OS prohibitively disclaimer ridden. Luckily, we only have a few (one?) large components of Debian that are under a 4-clause BSD license [OpenSSL]. I for one, will be glad when gnutls completely supplants the use of openssl. Don Armstrong [Oddly apropos random signature] -- Dropping non-free would set us back at least, what, 300 packages? It'd take MONTHS to make up the difference, and meanwhile Debian users will be fleeing to SLACKWARE. And what about SHAREHOLDER VALUE? -- Matt Zimmerman in <gYuD3D.A.ayC.nGB39@murphy> http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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