Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> wrote:

>I consider that to be a fee consistent with the expansion of Free Software. 
>In order to distribute modified binaries, I have to licence my source to the
>recipient as well.  That has clear freedom-enhancing properties (Now With
>Freesol, for added Freeness!)  The QPL says I must give a carte-blanche
>licence to the initial developer of the work I modify.  I don't see how that
>is enhancing Free Software.

The reason I feel this makes approximately no real difference is the
following:

1) We (that is, Debian) generally assume that copyleft licenses
strengthen free software more than BSD style licenses. 

2) In the case of a BSD-style license with a QPL-style forced
distribution upstream clause, there would be no need for a QPL-style
permissions grant. Upstream could subsume it into their closed product
anyway.

3) The QPL is closer to a copyleft than a BSD license. In most cases it
safeguards the availability of source.

I would argue that there are no cases in which the QPL is "worse" than a
BSD-style license that required copies to be given to the upstream
author, and in most cases it's "better". As a result, I think the
argument collapses to the forced distribution clause rather than the
permissions grant clause.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org