Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:

    Brian> Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> writes:
    >> I would agree entirely with that assessment.  I personally only
    >> have a problem with the forced distribution clause, and not the
    >> all-permissive license to the original developer.  I think the
    >> requirement for an all-permissive license is obnoxious, but
    >> still Free.

    Brian> If it were only an all-permissive license contingent on
    Brian> distribution *to that person*, that would be fine.  The
    Brian> compulsive license even if that person doesn't have a copy
    Brian> is not Free.

    Brian> For example, let's say I give some software under the QPL
    Brian> to Alice.  I also give it under the GPL to Bob.  Alice
    Brian> doesn't propagate hers, and tells me this.  Bob does
    Brian> propagate his.  It gets back to the initial developer,
    Brian> INRIA.  Now INRIA has my code, with a permissive license I
    Brian> didn't want to give them!

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with this.  I'm certainly having a
hard time finding a basis in the DFSG to justify this being non-free.

I'm also having a hard time convincing myself that we desire this
outcome to be non-free from some moral standpoint.

Intuitively I believe that granting additional permissions in a
license should not make an otherwise free license non-free.  Given the
GPL we seem to have accepted the premise that a license may require
all modifications to be distributed under the same license as the
original work itself.  The combined effect of these two statements
seems to be that you can create a license that grants extra
permissions to some class of people, even for all modifications that
are distributed.  (I don't think the QPL is such a license, but the
reason it is not such a license seems relatively easy to overcome.
It's still non-free for other reasons.)

Perhaps we should give up the intuition that additional rights granted
should not make a license less free.  If I'm going to support doing
that, I'd like to know why these outcomes are bad.  So far all I know
is that there are outcomes that seem fine to me that you consider
unacceptable.  

Note that even if we end up disagreeing on this issue, I'm still
interested in helping draft GRs to address conclusions of the QPL
discussion.  I think some of these issues are fairly important to
actually bring to the project; they keep coming up again in multiple
contexts and I'd like to know how the project as a whole feels because
it would make evaluating licenses easier.  However, I think we have a bit of
work understanding the arguments on both sides of the issue before we
could have an informed vote.