Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 18:59, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> One thing that still bothers me about this, and I haven't seen a good
> rebuttal of it yet, is why we're so keen to use the law to void out a clause
> in the licence because it's unenforcable. I've mentioned it before and had
> it danced around, but I still don't see why we shouldn't be honouring the
> author's wishes as expressed in his chosen licence.
Neither do I. Relying on the "unenforcability" of a license or a clause
in a license is foolishness in the extreme; all it takes is a little
lobbying from Hollywood for some seemingly unrelated thing, and
presto-chango, it's suddenly retroactively an enforcable clause under
the new and improved Super-DMCA, and because somebody had this
discussion and therefore noticed the clause, that makes it wilful
infringement.
Now, it may be that the author's wishes may or may not be practical, but
nobody is actually required to carry any particular author's works. For
myself, I consider forced-distribution clauses of any sort to be of such
a nature that I am unwilling to submit myself to them. I can give my
friend a CD or DVD full of binaries and corresponding source and
discharge my obligations entirely under the GPL and anything else I
consider to be "Free". YMMV. That CD can even be customized for them,
and I've still discharged my obligations. Under the QPL (or GPL 3(b),
which I think is equally impractical for such small scale distribution),
I've just incurred an obligation for some indeterminate time in the
future, when I may or may not be able to discharge that obligation
without significant cost. That risk is too great for me to consider
participating, and hence, I personally will not touch anything licensed
under the QPL.
What is acceptable for Debian to distribute is another matter entirely,
but I do think that the "pass a CD along to a friend" model ought to be
considered as part of the discussion.
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