Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: QPL 6c argumentation.
Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>:
> | c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the
> | initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items,
> | then you must supply one.
> The upstream author can request a copy of the items, if they are distributed,
> but not openly distributed (in which case he just needs to get the public
> version). One could argue again that this would mean a breach of the DFSG #1,
> since the right of the author to those software would be considered a fee or
> royalty, but the same argumentation as above makes me reject that.
I assume "the same argumentation as above" refers to your argument
about it not costing anything which you used in the 3b thread.
I disagree about it not costing anything. Even if you are entitled to
charge for the cost of data transfer there is still the cost of
administration. The cost of administration is probably not much, but
in many cases it's more than the cost of sending a postcard, and
Debian has, I think, always regarded as non-free a licence that
requires you to send a postcard to the author. Debian has also
regarded petting a cat as a restriction or cost, so I think it would
be a big break with tradition to accept 6c as an allowable
restriction.
In some cases the administration might cost quite a lot, if you need
legal approval or if you're on a Deser... sorry, I won't mention that
possibility!
> Furthermore, the distribution of these items is governed by the QPL 6a and 6b,
It's not clear to me that 6c is governed by 6a. I would guess it
probably isn't, but it's not worth arguing, because the cost of
administration is probably a bigger burden anyway.
So I see two chances of getting 6c past debian-legal:
(1) Claim that the cost of administration is negligible. I think this
goes against tradition.
(2) Claim that the developer can avoid 6c altogether by making sure
the items are available to the general public. Unfortunately, there's
no precedent that I know of for Debian regarding as free a requirement
to make software available to the general public when it is
distributed, so you'd have to try and build a consensus for that
rather than argue legalistically.
In either case you'd still have to cope with the privacy problem,
which you don't seem to have mentioned in your summary. It's not (in
my opinion) implied by the DFSG, but there seems to be quite a lot of
support for the idea that a free software licence should permit
private distribution within a group.
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