Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG : QPL 3b argumentation.

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> If they did not pick on this, there is sane reason to say this is
> ok.

I don't think that is a safe assumption to make in the general case,
and I know it doesn't apply here.

Immutable notices have been rejected from Debian before, for this same reason.

> We should concentrate on the real problems, namely the clause of
> venue and QPL 6c, which i have ground to believe will be no problem
> for upstream anymore, altough i have no official answer yet, and QPL
> 3b, which still remains problematic.

Does that actually mean QPL 6 will be removed from the OCaml license?
Oh Frabjuous Day!

Or just QPL 6c?  That would not be frabjuous, but I still might
callay.

>> My assumption is that they wanted to ban certain modifications of
>> their work, and were more concerned about maximizing credit than
>> writing free software.
>
> They just wanted to make sure someone didn't remove the copyright notice, or
> alter it to remove older contributors. Adding new contributors should be
> permitted, but that is the extent of it. 

Yes, but a ban on removing all and any copyright notices is not Free.
It's fine for an author to require that there *be* a copyright notice,
but forbidding translation or addition is not Free.

Requiring a specific dialog box isn't either -- it doesn't translate
to systems without a GUI.  Requiring specific text output also isn't
free, as it doesn't work with non-interactive or embedded systems.


-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu