Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue

[David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net>]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 10:34:08PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net> writes:
> 
> > But the cost of disclosure of the sources to downstream recipients is also a
> > fee imposed by the upstream author simply by choosing the GPL or
> > QPL.
> That only comes automatically with the QPL; with the GPL, I can work
> in a small group with no risk that it will be spread more widely.

Perhaps I replied too soon. On second thought, the problematic clause in the
QPL that you're referring to is 6c:

  c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial
  developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must supply
  one.

I said in my first reply that this discriminates against those whose field of
endeavor is private study. First, I think the spirit of DFSG 5 and 6, as
provided by the examples of business or genetic research, is meant to prevent
more explicit discrimination. 6c only applies to modifications which have been
distributed, so the private study endeavor does not apply. 

So back to the small group. From the wording of the license, I can't clearly
see whether or not one can distribute the software within a company (since
"you" is not defined within the document) and still have it considered as
having been distributed (if you applies to a corporate entity, and the software
is kept within the corporation, is it distributed?) This issue appears with the
GPL as well, and the boundary is not entirely defined. I still see conflict
between what we accept with the GPL and appear to fail to accept with the QPL.

Finally, the spirit of the QPL, as from their annotated license[1] appears to
be very much in favor of Free software. Section 6c's annotation states:

 "This is to avoid problems with companies that try to hide the source. If we
 get to know about it we want to be able to get hold of the code even if we are
 not users. In this way, if somebody tries to cheat and we get to know we can
 release the code to the public."

Not only "can" they release the code to the public, but they must release it
should they choose to use it, according to section 3a. I would argue that while
this license may fail corner cases of DFSG 5 or 6 (and I'm not sure it does) it
certaintly does appear that the author's intentions are to remain Free. I have
heard repeatedly that the developer's intentions are taken in to account when
evaluating packages, and we seem to have some clear indication here that the
goal of the QPL is to keep modifications open to the community.

 - David Nusinow

[1] http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html