Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
[ Apologied for the delay in responding; I've had hardware issues
stopping me seeing this ]
Don Armstrong writes:
>On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> What part of
>>
>> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
>>
>> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
>> persons.
>>
>> allows for _any_ discrimination?
>
>None of it, apparently, which is one of the reasons why the DFSG is a
>set of guidelines, not a mere definition.
That's a convenient argument for ignoring whichever bits of the DFSG
you don't like, it must be said. If you're going to selectively apply
DFSG#5 as you see fit, then consensus grounded in the DFSG is never
going to happen.
>> Are you reading the same DFSG as me??? "Must not discriminate" is
>> not in any sense vague - it does not leave any leeway for "allowable
>> discrimination".
>
>Well, then why should effective discrimination be allowed? Surely
>effective discrimination fits under "must not discriminate."
As I've said, I don't consider "effective discrimination" to be a
useful concept at all. That leaves _all_ licenses potentially
infringing DFSG#5, depending entirely on local laws trumping license
clauses. As we're trying to come up with a base level that we consider
to be free, that doesn't help us in the slightest. It's grossly unfair
to declare a license non-free because external factors may stop people
from exercising the rights granted by that license.
>In the end, we still come back to the fact that we're dealing with a
>set of guidelines that needs to be thoughtfully applied to a
>license. For many of these cases, there's no known bright line test,
>where X is free, and Y is non free. [See the OSD v DFSG threads for
>more examples...]
The DFSG clearly needs to be tightened up and clarified, then. Or is
the point of debate on -legal simply to justify the existence of
-legal?
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
"Further comment on how I feel about IBM will appear once I've worked out
whether they're being malicious or incompetent. Capital letters are forecast."
Matthew Garrett, http://www.livejournal.com/users/mjg59/30675.html
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