Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
I think a bit of confusion's developed as to just what people are
after. That's silly & stupid, so I'm going to try to be very precise
(anal, even) about language in this message. Be warned. ;)
Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
> There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable
> software. The two are orthogonal concepts.
We're not talking about plagiarizing software. That's when someone
claims to have written someone else's code. That's silly, and wrong,
and probably against the law without even considering the license.
That's not what you want this license to prevent -- not least because it
does absolutely nothing to prevent it.
The question d-l has is: what *are* you trying to achieve? Because
there are two possibilities (given that we consider the license as
written non-free):
- You're trying to achieve something we consider non-free. This isn't a
terribly interesting case -- your software can't go into debian main.
Nothing personal, we're just following our social contract.
- Your goal isn't, in itself, non-free. This is the interesting case,
because it means that we're not communicating well, and we don't
understand your license. Likely, this means that the wording of the
license could be improved.
So what are you trying to accomplish? Based on what I've read of this
thread, I can see a few possibilities:
- You don't want people to plagiarize your software. I.e., you don't
want folks like me to claim to have written it.
- You want to make sure that information about who contributed
(financially and/or intellectually) to ReiserFS is readily available,
so that folks who want to know can find out.
- You want to make sure that people know who contributed to ReiserFS
regardless of whether or not they are interested in finding out.
The first two options are fine, depending on how they're implemented.
If that's what you want, I'm sure we can hash out wording for the
license that would satisfy both you and d-l.
A couple comments (that I may not be remembering properly) seemed to
imply that these credits are part of a revenue generating model. Folks
who wish to require users to see their name in conjunction with ReiserFS
may purchase this control over what ReiserFS users see (i.e., they can
purchase an ad -- the first TV ads worked exactly like this, that's why
the word "sponsor" is used to refer to ad purchasers). If this is the
case, and you are using the license to implement this control (i.e.,
option three above), then I think it's clear that you intend your
license to work exactly as it appears to, and restrict users' freedom.
If this is your goal (or perhaps some other variant on item 3 above)
I don't think you're going to have much luck convincing folks on d-l
that your license is Free.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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