Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:35:49PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> wrote:
>
> >The QPL is bad news in yet another way. Do we need a DFSG basis for "forces
> >people to break the law"?
>
> Mm. It forces people to break the law if they exercise certain freedoms.
> China requires (used to require?) licensing of imported cryptography
> software. If it were GPLed, distributing modified versions would be
> illegal under copyright law (you couldn't actually satisfy the GPL's
> requirements) and if the recipient didn't have a license, under
> anti-crypto laws. Israel used to have similar provisions.
This is a slightly different problem to that of a local law which says "you
can't do that". I'm not distributing prohibited technology to an embargoed
location by choice. I never thought "hmm, wouldn't it be cool if I sent
this to Iran". Instead, the terms of the licence are forcing me to do that.
Even worse, there may have been no way I could have known I would later have
to break the law at the time I accepted the licence (by distributing my
modifications). The author could previously have been in a friendly
country, but happen to be in Iran when they request my libraries.
I have no way of knowing that my compliance with the licence will some day
require me to break the law. It's a downright hideous licence term, and a
pretty damn good argument for why forced unrelated distribution is a bad
thing.
> I'd be inclined to say that countries that limit exports of technology
> are broken and we should treat them as if they don't exist, even though
But it's really dangerous to do so. Allowing such a licence into Debian
could result in our users to fall foul of situations just like these.
- Matt
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