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Re: Bug#251209: hwb: Upstream does not own the rights to the material



On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 06:47:33PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Correct.
> 
> Interesting question to debian-legal for curiosity's sake: could the
> right to distribute "partially or in whole" be stretched enough to argue
> that modified versions are just various partial distributions of hwb
> combined with some additional material?  I'm inclined to think no, but
> it might be arguable.

I think a (U.S.) court would probably piss on us for trying that.
"Reproduction in part", as I understand it, generally refers to
excerpting or, at most, abridgement.

The freedom to modify that we seek would afford us much more latitude
than that.

In general, I think we should respect the wishes of the licensor, even
in they are not DFSG-free.  There are occasional exceptions to this, as
in the case where something that has been handled as Free Software in
the past falls under the control of a new organization that is hostile
to us, but we should be careful and deliberate about such exceptions.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |     Reality is what refuses to go away
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     when I stop believing in it.
branden@debian.org                 |     -- Philip K. Dick
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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