Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> I don't believe licenses should affect the distribution of anything
>> other than the code they cover.
>
>I mostly agree with that sentiment, and think it stems from DFSG 9.[1]
>But regardless, there isn't a requirement of the DFSG saying that
>explicitely, which is one of the reasons why I brought it up.
I think part of our problem is that we're not really clear on what
"restriction" means. The two choices seem to be something like the way
it's used in the GPL (so anything that requires you to do anything), or
alternatively something that actually prevents you from doing something
rather than merely making you jump through more hoops.
>> There's no consistent and coherent argument going on, other than a
>> sort of fuzzy "We think it's not free, and we can sort of point at
>> these two things and handwave and say they cover them".
>
> DFSG 5 No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
> persons.
Indeed.
>As had been mentioned earlier, the argument is that because dissidents
>living in some country (or persons living on a desert island) are
>either persons or a group of persons, and are discriminated against by
>a clause of this license, then that particular clause fails DFSG 5.
I don't believe that dissidents are discriminated against by the
license. They're discriminated against by their government.
Interestingly, there appears to have been no discussion as to what DFSG
5 actually meant while the discussion regarding the original social
contract went on. The only examples people use are things like
nationality. It's certainly not obvious that it was intended that things
like "This license can not be satisfied by people without the ability to
communicate with upstream" should fall under clause 5. Of course, that
discussion happened over 7 years ago. In the absence of it being made
clear then, we need to try to work out what people think now.
>> The GPL discriminates against a slightly smaller set of
>> dissidents. The GPL discriminates against people on desert islands
>> who have a binary CD but not a source one.
>
>If worst comes to worst, we can use DFSG 10 to avoid this issue, and
>use it to define the line where the dissident tests can no longer be
>applied.
Which is a dreadful fudge. Interestingly, the original drafts of the
DFSG *don't* have DFSG 10 as an indepedent point - it's an informational
footer. It's not until it gets "reformatted" that it suddenly gets given
the same priority as the other points. To be honest, I think it makes
far more sense in its original form.
>Have you given it any thought yourself? [Or, to put it another way,
>how would you define where the line should be drawn in this particular
>case?]
I think the line should be positioned based on some amount of
cost-benefit analysis with a healthy dose of pragmatism built in. For
example, I don't care much about people on desert islands. If they're
the only thing standing between a license being free or not, and if
there's a demonstrable benefit to us for including that software, I'm
entirely happy that they be ignored (possibly we should use the extra
money we make from the extra CDs sold to fund a trip to get them off the
bloody island).
Of course, this mostly just turns the argument into one about
weightings. Since these are mostly determined by personal opinion, it
suggests that there isn't a correct place to draw the line. The only
real suggestion I have is wider discussion in an attempt to gain a
better understanding of how different people view the issue.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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