Re: Fwd: figlet license change from Artistic to Clarified Artistic or Artistic 2.0?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 03:26:54PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> The FSF is well familiar with this. It's one of the many reasons (or excuses)
> why Daniel Bernstein refuses to release his software under a free license,
> since he says that free licenses claim to grant more rights than are actually
> grantable. (BTW, Bernstein also grants a bare license to copy his almost
> unmodifiable files, and denies that it is within his power to revoke them,
> though with no argument why.)
Not sure why you refer to his files as "unmodifiable"? Do you mean because
they are written in a style of C that is unfamiliar to most people?
I don't think he's ever argued that it is not within his power to revoke
distribution rights (in fact, many of his beta packages had expiration dates,
after which distribution was not allowed anymore). What he has argued is
that since copyright does not cover use, he cannot revoke your right to use
the program after you have legally obtained it.
--Adam
--
Adam McKenna <adam@debian.org> <adam@flounder.net>
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