Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>:
> Why should free software support companies in not releasing their
> knowledge to the world? Why do we consider the freedom to hoard
> information an important one?
I'm not sure we do, and this is somewhat off-topic, but:
- The information in question will be made public in due course. It's
not like a UK state secret.
- If a company is prevented from keeping its plans confidential then
it will have a hard time competing with other companies that do keep
their plans confidential.
- I don't think we should be trying to make a list of all the freedoms
that we consider to be important and allowing licences to restrict any
freedom that isn't in our list. A better approach, I think, is to be
suspicious of any restrictions that are not easily justified as a
means of furthering software freedom. In general, I don't think it
helps free software for licences to restrict privacy and
confidentiality of business plans, hardware designs, etc. However, I
don't necessarily claim that such restrictions make a licence
non-free; I am undecided about that.
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