Re: prozilla: Nonfree
On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:54:29AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:46:51AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 12:16:21AM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > > Justin Pryzby wrote:
> > > > ftpparse.c heading:
> > > >
> > > > Commercial use is fine, if you let me know what programs
> > > > you're using this in.
> > > >
> > > > Which I believes fails the desert-island test? Legal, can you
> > > > confirm?
> > >
> > > Confirmed; requirements to notify the author are non-free.
>
> > Bullshit. There's no requirement whatsoever that a source file may be
> > used at all "commercially", assuming the common definition of
> > "commercial" == "closed source".
>
> Such a definition is wrong, and will not appear in any dictionary entry for
> that word.
Wrong? Well http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Commercial-HOWTO.html uses the
term to mean exactly that. Certainly other meanings could be derived,
but I think my definition is the most common in the context it was used.
> This license is clearly non-free in the absence of clarification
> from the author, as it fails DFSG #6.
>
> Please base your arguments in favor of the freeness of a given license on
> something more substantial than Shit You Made Up.
I didn't say it was free as is--I already stated it needs clarification.
I'm just saying that the argument that it's non-free because it requires
notification to the author is retarded.
It's clear to me that the author intends for this to be free by our
standards. However, that author is DJB and getting any clarification is
most likely not going to happen. However, it's been around for years
and has been used in many free software projects without any problems
that I can find. I can only find it currently in 2 packages in
Debian--prozilla and elinks. The others that used it in the past
(libcurl, wget?) likely rewrote the code since it was obsolete anyway.
Why not just take the code from one of those if it's really a concern?
--
Society is never going to make any progress until we all learn to
pretend to like each other.
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