Re: DFSG#10 and the Open Source Initiative
On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 01:37:12PM -0300, Humberto Massa wrote:
> The DFSG must include such supporting information, and I'll explain why.
> If you interpret it as "all modifications and derived works", you
> excluded _almost_ _any_ license, since every license I can recall from
> memory forbids you to touch the copyright notices, among other stuff.
Unmodificable copyright notices, license terms and warranty disclaimers have
always been accepted as an unavoidable exception, since they're fundamental
to the way copyright works. It's a strong view on d-legal that nothing in
the DFSG actually allows them, but that we have to allow them anyway.
The fact that these are allowed doesn't imply that anything else should be.
People have tried to use copyright notices as a wedge to allow other
restrictions on modification, without success. I'm assuming you have other
"stuff" in mind beyond legal notices.
The only allowed restrictions on modification I can think of are GPL2a and 2c.
(There's disagreement on whether or not they're "acceptable", but they're
clearly restrictions on modification.) One other is the GPL's preamble,
which is an invariant text that is not a legal text and not part of the
license terms; I believe it's also non-free, in exactly the same manner as
the GFDL's "invariant sections". Since I read DFSG#10 as a grandfathering
clause, I don't think these support your premise.
Do you have any other examples of restrictions on modification that are (and
should be) allowed? Since your premise is "_almost_ _any_ license", you
should be able to find some examples in licenses that aren't confused by
DFSG#10.
--
Glenn Maynard
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