Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:27:25PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> wrote:
> >>On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 11:05:55AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> >>>2) In the case of a BSD-style license with a QPL-style forced
> >>>distribution upstream clause, there would be no need for a QPL-style
> >>>permissions grant. Upstream could subsume it into their closed product
> >>>anyway.
> >>
> >>But I could do the same to their work under a BSD licence. I can't do that
> >>with a QPL-licenced work. It's all about equality. It's not necessarily a
> >>*good* outcome, but it's a *better* outcome.
> >
> > I don't think a license that allows people to produce closed products is
> > a good license. I think a license that allows precisely one person to
> > produce a closed product is better than one that allows many people to
> > do so. I still don't think it's good, but I certainly don't think it's
> > non-free. Why is equality so much of an issue?
>
> Very well put. That's exactly my reasoning behind saying the "upstream
> gets an all-permissive license" requirement is acceptable and just
> obnoxious.
While being able to take your modifications to a piece of software
proprietary might be considered bad (opinions differ), I'd much rather that
everyone was able to do it than one party. That way nobody is in a
preferential position -- why should someone be able to take my work
proprietary, if I don't have the ability to do the same in return?
You might argue "because they've done a lot more work that you", but that's
not what the licence says. If I rewrite 50% of a QPL'd program, the initial
author still has the ability to sell that large body of code, but I can't
sell my modified version.
The inherent unfairness of it irritates me. On the one hand, I can see why
some people don't think it's non-free -- "If I can make the modifications
guaranteed by the DFSG, what's the harm?", but one of the real benefits of
Free Software is that no member of the community has an inherent advantage
over anyone else -- a "free market" ideal.
- Matt
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