Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> writes:
> On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 18:47, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>> Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> writes:
>>
>> > What? That doesn't follow at all. Even ignoring that, you're still
>> > wrong. You have no guarantee that upstream hasn't done something that is
>> > assumed to breach the GPL, such as depending on a BSDed library that
>> > happens to link against OpenSSL. If the code had been under the BSD
>> > license, the number of possible conflicts you have to check would have
>> > been smaller and thus easier.
>>
>> But it's as easy to blame that on the OpenSSL license as on the GPL.
>> I don't think you can look at nonlocal problems as an indication of
>> any given license being non-free; just as a reason not to increase
>> license proliferation.
>
> Fine. The combination of the existence of the OpenSSL license and the
> GPL conspires to make it harder to utilise the freedoms they wish to
> provide. Attempting to call this non-free would be silly.
Yes, it would be silly. But it's not a conspiracy -- it's several
groups doing free but incompatible things. Freedom can be chaotic
sometimes. We want to reduce license proliferation to prevent chaos
from becoming anarchy, but that doesn't make any of the licenses
involved non-free -- just ill-advised.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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