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Re: Is OSL 2.0 compliant with DFSG?



On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 03:47:28PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> In general I think the free software community would be best served by
> licenses that strongly discourage patent actions.  So I think it is
> desirable for us to interpret the DFSG in a manner that allows for
> such licenses while not violating the text of the DFSG.

I agree that software patents are extremely insidious and potentially
very threatening to the development and use of Free Software.

I do not believe that any conceivable defense is necessarily warranted,
however.

Moreover, I am not at all confident that the OSL 2.0 is a good vehicle
via which to communicate our intolerance of software patents.

However, I do agree that it's not necessary to fight this battle right
now, as the OSL 2.0 is defective in other, less controversial, respects.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    If I recall correctly, devfs went
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    straight from being marked as
branden@debian.org                 |    EXPERIMENTAL to OBSOLETE in the
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    kernel config.     -- Tore Anderson

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