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Re: DRAFT d-l summary of the OSL v2.0



On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 06:22:53AM -0400, Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> 
> > There is no DFSG #0 that requires the right to *run* the program,
> > because the prevailing legal opinion is that copyright cannot restrict
> > use in the first place. If the license demands that one accepts a
> > restriction on use as a condition on getting the other rights the DFSG
> > requires, is an attached string. As such, it renders all of the other
> > rights void for the purposes of applying the DFSG to it.
> 
> I realize now that I misunderstood your argument in my last message.
> Your claim is that since the use restriction attaches to all the other
> freedoms the license grants, it is also a restriction on all those
> freedoms....?  In which case DFSG #6 is completely redundant.
> 
> Hrm.  I'm still uncomfortable -- if it were intended that the DFSG be
> interpreted that way, why is #6 there at all?

My considered opinion is that DFSG #5 and #6 are horrible blunders
that don't mean at all what they say. With a little ingenuity, you can
argue that *anything* either is or is not in violation of either or
both of these clauses.

They're supposed to prohibit this sort of license clause (all real
examples, albeit not with precise wording):

 - This software may not be used in nuclear power plants.
 - This software may not be used by the US government.
 - This software may only be used for non-commercial purposes.

And there they stop. Rewriting the DFSG to eliminate this confusion is
fairly high on my todo list.

[It is approximately valid to say that they're redundant, if you read
the entire DFSG in the lax manner that these two clauses require. But
we can do much better than that.]

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