Re: [POSITION SUMMARY] Re: Plugins, libraries, licenses and Debian

[bts@alum.mit.edu (Brian T. Sniffen)]

Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 11:10:05AM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
>> Now, there is a potential problem. Remember that scripting language 
>> mentioned before? If someone were to write a script that used both 
>> INVERT and STENOG, and then distribute that script, there might be a 
>> problem. But that's an issue for another thread.
>
> Actually, it's closer than you think. Any "product" [arbitrary
> definition] that requires all three components is a derivative work of
> all of them; that will almost certainly violate one or more of the
> licenses.
>
> Hmm, that's actually interesting. We have an emergent licensing
> constraint that is a property of none of the works involved, but only
> appears when they are put together. I don't think we can even discuss
> the DFSG-freeness of such a constraint in any meaningful way.

Since Debian distributes an Operating System (base, essential, etc)
and a number of additional packages (optional, contrib, non-free) from
which a user might wish to build an Operating System, I think it's
quite reasonable to discuss the Freeness of such a constraint: it
logically isn't Free by DFSG #1 to #9, but is (I think) under DFSG
#10: the GPL and BSD licenses are explicitly Free.