Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> I don't believe licenses should affect the distribution of anything
> other than the code they cover.
I mostly agree with that sentiment, and think it stems from DFSG 9.[1]
But regardless, there isn't a requirement of the DFSG saying that
explicitely, which is one of the reasons why I brought it up.
> some people claim forced distribution breaches DFSG 1, some claim it
> breaches DFSG 5.
There's nothing wrong with a clause of a license breaching multiple
clauses of the DFSG. I personally prefer to use DFSG 5 in this case,
but I see arguments for other clauses of the DFSG as well.
> There's no consistent and coherent argument going on, other than a
> sort of fuzzy "We think it's not free, and we can sort of point at
> these two things and handwave and say they cover them".
DFSG 5 No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
persons.
As had been mentioned earlier, the argument is that because dissidents
living in some country (or persons living on a desert island) are
either persons or a group of persons, and are discriminated against by
a clause of this license, then that particular clause fails DFSG 5.
Should you disagree with a particular tenet of this argument, please
argue against it rather than attempting to characterize the entire
argument as attempts of -legal members making the arguments to fly
like birds using vigorus up and down motion of their hands and arms.
> The GPL discriminates against a slightly smaller set of
> dissidents. The GPL discriminates against people on desert islands
> who have a binary CD but not a source one.
If worst comes to worst, we can use DFSG 10 to avoid this issue, and
use it to define the line where the dissident tests can no longer be
applied.
I'd personally rather see the tests become more accurate and able to
dicern between these two cases though, but I haven't thought of a
decent way to do this yet.
Have you given it any thought yourself? [Or, to put it another way,
how would you define where the line should be drawn in this particular
case?]
Don Armstrong
1: I erroneously mentioned DFSG 10 in the previous messages, iirc.
--
If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
-- Lowery's Law
http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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