Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2004 at 11:35:58AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
>> That should be mentioned, yes. It should also be noted in such a
>> suggestion that this alternative would be GPL-incompatible. Also, such
>> a license takes advantage of the deprecated DFSG 4, which may or may not
>> be removed in the future; should that be noted as well?
>
> I believe he has essentially said that he wants to only allow patches, in
> order to prevent forking, so I think any approach that he'll accept will
> have to use DFSG#4.
>
> (I personally consider the patch element of DFSG#4 bogus. Patch clauses
> prevent forking and code reuse almost entirely, both of which are
> critical,
> fundamental elements of Free Software.
Patch clauses, just as a note, must *only* apply to *distribution*; one
which applied to non-distributed copies would be entirely unacceptable.
As such, they are essentially a silly and stupid hoop on distribution.
It's plausible, even, to construct an 'auto-patchifier' for a revision
control system which allows all the code reuse and forking to be done
normally, and whenever it's distributed, converts it to the stupid 'patch'
form automatically, and converts it back at the recipient's end.
> I tend to suspect that people
> using them want the individual benefits of Free Software--of free
> contributed work, bug fixes, code review, distribution--without the only
> reciprocation of placing the work in the pool of reusable code.)
--
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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