Re: Is the OSL DFSG free?
Gerfried Fuchs <alfie@ist.org> writes:
> * Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> [2003-09-02 18:46]:
>> On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 02:02:50PM +0200, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
>>> Isn't Section 10 of the OSL ("Mutual Termination for Patent Action") a
>>> violation of Section 5 of the DFSG ("No Discrimination Against Persons
>>> or Groups")? It clearly discriminates persons filing a law suite
>>> against a OSL licensed software.
>>
>> This sort of rationale is usually bogus.
>>
>> In its ultimate form, the MIT/X11 license is "non-free" because it
>> discriminates against people trying to sell the software.
>
> Thats one of the reason why we put software that is "for non-commercial
> use only" into non-free. Your point was?
You appear confused: "for non-commercial use" does not restrict the
distribution, but rather the use of the software. For example, if I
had a copy of Emacs with a license "for non-commercial use only," I
could not use it to write programs for pay.
Those licenses discriminate against a field of endeavor (actually
against all commercial fields of endeavor).
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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