Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
> The GPL is actually a rather interesting case here, since it *does*
> require the preservation of credits, and in a way that I believe
> Debian finds acceptably free.
2c of the GPL is actually somewhat controversial. I don't know whether
anyone actually thinks it makes the license non-free, but I suspect a
number of people would be quite happy if it were removed from the GPL.
That said, it's much weaker than the proposed "clarification" for
reiserfs4:
- As you point out, it's only for interactive use. While not (directly)
a freeness issue, that does significantly reduce the burden; since
it's being used interactively you've ruled out a lot of the more
irritating times to display a verbose message.
- It defines what must be presented clearly (i.e., copyright, no
warranty, where to find the GPL), but in the loosest possible terms
("display an announcement including" the information, rather than
dictating text).
- The stuff being displayed serves a clear legal purpose and cannot be
expanded/added to by downstream modifications. For example, two works
which both display such a blurb, when combined, need only display one
such blurb, rather than the combination of two different blurbs.
Personally, I consider this to be about the outside limit wrt freedom.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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