Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 12:57:33AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Right, that's basically my point. There's plenty of grey fuzziness here,
> and the QPL falls within it. debian-legal have produced some tests in an
> attempt to clarify which bits of the grey fuzziness are free or not, but
> they're effectively arbitrary - they haven't been well discussed within
> the project as a whole. If we're going to make decisions about the grey
> fuzziness, we need to do it in a way that includes a much wider range of
> the developer body. Until that's done, there's no intrinsic reason for
> debian-legal's idea about the location of the line to be better than
> anyone else's opinion.
This argument could be used for a huge number of licenses that go through
this list, claiming that every decision more "fuzzy" than "this program
may not be used commercially" should be discussed on debian-devel or
some other inappropriate mailing list (or, even more unreasonably, put
to a vote to adjust the project's founding documents) before being valid.
I just don't find "silent majority" arguments interesting. This isn't a
private mailing list; if you disagree, argue your position, instead of
arguing that the conclusions of the list are meaningless.
> With the possible exception of the dissident test, I don't think any of
> these are obviously freedom issues. I'm also not sure I buy the
> dissident test - the GPL allows for a hostile government to declare that
> it holds a patent on some section of the subversive code and prevent it
> from being distributed any further. This is potentially worse for the
> dissident movement as a whole, even if it's better for the individual
> dissident who wrote the code. They can't comply with the GPL unless they
> fight the lawsuit, and, uh, well. Oops.
A hostile government can also declare that the subversive code can not
be distributed because it says so; that's not the point of that test.
Please see http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html, 9 A(a).
--
Glenn Maynard
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