Re: Open Software License v2.1
On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 01:20:10PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> Anything that requires a contract-like construct, rather than a simple
> license, is probably non-free. DFSG-free licenses give things to the
> licensee, not to the copyright holder. They are not a trade (although
> the grant of permissions does not have to be the most generous
> possible), even if their social behaviour resembles one.
This clause, unlike previous ones, does not make the copyright holder
special: it applies regardless of who is being sued.
> (Corollary of these two: terminating a license for any reason other
> than non-compliance is probably non-free)
"You must do X [offer source, keep my name on the program] to be in
compliance + noncompliance means termination" versus "Not doing X
means termination" is not an interesting distinction.
> Patent licenses are ignored unless there are actively enforced
> patents. In almost every case where we come across these patent
This is Debian's legal policy, and is completely irrelevant with
respect to determining DFSG-freeness of a copyright license.
This all just seems like an attempt to avoid discussion of the merits
and problems actually related to the restriction at hand. That
discussion is useful, even when we agree on the generalizations. It's
a lot easier to explain to licensors why a clause is bad based on
actual problems it introduces, instead of on high-level generalizations;
and if the discussion can't find anything wrong with it, there may be
something wrong with the generalizations.
--
Glenn Maynard
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