Re: Choice of venue, was: GUADEC report

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> writes:
>> At which point it becomes non-free. Or is it your belief that it should 
>> never be possible to turn a free license into a non-free one? The GPL 
>> contains a clause that explicitly allows for that to happen.
>
>No, it doesn't.  It terminates only a license I'm already violating.
>At that point, what do I care?

Read GPL 7.

>> What field of endeavour does a clause along the lines of "The copyright
>> holder may terminate this license at any time" discriminate against? How 
>> does this field of endeavour fall under DFSG 6 without it being read in 
>> an extremely broad fashion?
>
>Lots of them.  Nuclear power plants, for example, or commercial
>distribution.  How, you say, when it doesn't mention them?  Because
>it's got a arbitrary rewriting clause written in.  At some point, the
>licensor can say, "By the way, I terminate the license for all nuclear
>power plant operators," and from that instant on the operators are in
>violation.

No, by that argument means it discriminates against all fields of
endeavour. Were the copyright holder to terminate the license of a
specific subgroup, it would then discriminate against a particular field
of endeavour. At that point, it would be unambiguously non-free.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org