Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG : QPL 3b argumentation.
Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 02:38:18PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>>
>> > On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 12:22:04PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>> >> The law already makes it illegal to tamper with copyright notices; a
>> >> license doesn't need to say that in order to make it wrong to do so.
>> >> Perhaps it could just be left out?
>> >
>> > Given that lawyer wrote this licence, why did they add it. And in any case,
>> > what harm is there to do so ?
>>
>> I don't know why they added it. Maybe you could ask them. The usual
>> reason is to make such a change not merely a crime, but also copyright
>> infringement, so as to extract punitive damages as well.
>>
>> But as a side effect, it also makes a bunch of good things violate the
>> license -- like translating "Copyright (c) 2004 Bob Smith" to whatever
>> language is appropriate.
>
> Notice this other wording for basically the same thing :
>
> 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
> source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
> conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
> copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
> notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
> and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
> along with the Program.
That's very different; that allows me to write a new and different
copyright notice, so long as it's complete and accurate, and also
appropriate.
> It may be not exactly the same wording, but the intent is clearly the same. I
> know that ocaml upstream chose the QPL in part because it was less verbose and
> easier to understand that other licences out there. Sure, you may loose some
> details in this simplicity, but the intent is clear.
And yet we don't argue much about the GPL, MIT/X11, or other Free
licenses, and there has been well over a week and hundreds of messages
on the QPL. If the idea is that it's easier to understand, they
really screwed up.
> Also, consider the annotation :
>
> This doesn't really need to be stated, since to do so would be fraudulent.
>
> Do we really need to continue arguing about this close ?
Yes -- the annotation is incorrect. This is much more restrictive
than the law requires. There are many honest activities which break
this clause.
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
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