Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
@ 13/05/2004 14:11 : wrote Raul Miller :
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 01:01:55PM -0300, Humberto Massa wrote:
The "I think I am understanding" part is: you are arguing that, by
forbidding one of making and distributing those (functional)
modifications, the GPL forbids some derived works, and in this process,
hurts DFSG#3 "Derived Works :: The license must allow modifications and
derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same
terms as the license of the original software." Is that what you are
trying to say?
That sounds right.
Then you are right, and it's a subtle bug in the phrasing of the DFSG#3.
For you to be wrong, you must be reading a word that is not there: "the
license must allow _all_ modifications and derived works [etc]" and
then, even the GPL would be non-free. I also think any DFSG
incompatibility with the GPL is a bug in the DFSG.
Some DD could, then, propose, this important edition to the DFSG:
new DFSG#3, GPL-compatible: "Derived Works :: The license must allow any
modification to be made to the original work, generating derived works;
it must also allow the resulting derived work to be distributed under
the same licensing terms, unless said result is also a derived work of
another, incompatibly-licensed original work"
Is my English clear enough above?
complete explanation of all copyright holders, nor a complete
description of the licensing terms. If it did, the Linux kernel would
be significantly bigger (something like over 10000 (C) notices).
The problem comes when the licensing terms conflict.
As I have said before, the problems comes when the licensing terms
conflict /and/ you want to redistribute the combined stuff.
More properly, the problem comes when the licensing terms conflict and
you and you want to do anything controlled by copyright.
Yeah, but, in the metafont+gcc case, making (unlimited number of total
and partial) copies is part of the rights that gcc's license (and
presumably metafont's, too) grants to the licensee. So, my (semi-)final
verdict about metafont+gcc is:
1. you can combine gcc and metafont;
2. you can NOT distribute the resulting combination in any form;
3. you can distribute a script that will mix and match the sources to
make the new combo;
4. _I_ _don't_ _know_ for sure, but it seems to me that you can NOT
distribute the diff that does the real job of combining the combo.
Obviously, due to the nature of the OpenSSL license and the nature of
its interface (that overlaps with GNUTLS in various points, for
instance), my opinion about the Gentoo GPL'd-program + OpenSSL is: there
is no infringement.
--
br,M
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