Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>>Because privacy is an inherent right of Debian's users. Further,
>>communication with others, and sharing useful information and tools
>>with them, should not have any impact on my privacy from you.
>
> Why is privacy an inherent right?
"It just is." -- that's what inherent means.
Why do I think we should *recognize* an inherent right to privacy?
Because our users' privacy is important to them. Because disclosure
and exposure to ridicule and comment is costly. Because we want our
users to have freedom in their software, and excessive scrutiny is
both a good tool for those who wish to restrict freedom and itself a
brake on exercise of freedom.
I sing in the shower, but I do not sing where others can hear me.
> Why does personal privacy outweigh the importance of modifications
> to free software being available to all?
Because you don't have any right to software I've written. Those
modifications to free software aren't the community's; they're my own
thoughts. Now, we consider it acceptable for a license to say that IF
I distribute to anyone AND IF I based my work on free software, I MUST
give the recipients the same freedom I had.
It's a good thing to encourage free software being available to all.
But it's a bad thing to compel others to publish their software to be
available to all. A copyleft encourages free software, and ensures
the software cannot be taken proprietary. The QPL compels
distribution and licensing, which is very different.
In any case, the QPL doesn't ensure the software is free for all; it
ensures that it can be used in proprietary ways by INRIA's paying
customers. I can't make cool modifications and distribute them under
any copyleft, because INRIA can just combine them with their own
proprietary code and sell that.
That is, if I have cool compiler changes and want to release those
under a copyleft, so as to tempt INRIA to release the secret
proprietary parts of OCaml, I can't -- they've ensured that they can
use my compiler changes for non-free software. Bear in mind that
that's what you're defending here, not some ideal "publish an eprint
of this if you modify it" license.
>>Imagine a license which said that any changes, when distributed,
>>should be sent to the US NSA for evaluation of possible terrorist
>>intent. Is such a license free? We certainly don't want to support
>>terrorists. But is it OK to have a license which hurts them and
>>scares[1] everybody else? No, that's non-free.
>
> If the license was "You must either provide these modifications to
> everyone or you must provide them to the NSA", then no, I wouldn't have
> any objection to that. I doubt I'd consider "You must provide these
> changes to the NSA" acceptable unless the NSA got into the business of
> distributing any software except their own. But, frankly, I haven't
> thought about it too hard yet.
They do, as it happens, distribute a lot of software that isn't
written there. Some Debian developers are even active in contributing
to NSA-distributed software.
-Brian
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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