Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> wrote:
>"The opinions of debian-legal" consist of the opinions of all those
>developers and non-developers who participate on this list. This is not
>a closed list. If the opinions of some developers diverge from the
>opinions on debian-legal, then those developers should start
>participating on debian-legal and expressing their opinions.
Yes, in an ideal world that would be the case. In the world we live in,
people have been intimidated away from participating in debian-legal
because of the debating style and perceived extremism of certain
participants. Refusal to acknowledge that is likely to end up leading to
debian-legal having no influence whatsoever.
>I believe the situation in the Dissident test is that the laws of the
>totalitarian government are irrelevant. The Dissident test triggers if,
>when the dissident finally leaves the jurisdiction of the totalitarian
>government, some copyright holder can say that the actions they took to
>maintain their privacy violated the copyright license, by the laws of
>non-totalitarian governments.
Ok. Why do we consider this worse than the GPL's requirement that source
be distributed with binaries? A pragmatic disident isn't going to hand
out source to people that he wants to run the software - there's more of
a risk of it being traced back to him. A written offer isn't much better
if it has his name on it. The GPL makes it harder to be a political
dissident than the BSD license does. Why have we drawn the line there
rather than in a place that would also exclude the GPL?
(I'm going to be fantastically unconvinced by "We drew it there because
we can't allow the GPL to become non-free")
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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