Re: why is graphviz package non-free?
On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 01:33:08PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Glenn Maynard wrote:
> > A license that says "{GPL-ish source terms}, but all modifications must
> > be released to the whole world under a BSD-style license" isn't even special-
> > casing the original author, though.
>
> DFSG3:
> > 3. Derived Works
> >
> > The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must
> > allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of
> > the original software.
>
> If you can't release your modifications under the same terms as the
> original, then it isn't DFSG-Free.
The discussion at hand is whether this interpretation is a useful one.
(There's no real indication that this interpretation was intended in this
way.) Saying "we should require this because this interpretation is
possible" isn't very convincing.
Indeed, I agree that it's extremely distasteful for a license to do this;
I'd never contribute to such a work. I can't come up with any strong
argument of why it's non-free, though ("distasteful" really isn't enough),
and nobody else is doing so, either--the only argument I've seen is that
it's a "payment" to the upstream author, but that's not true in the above
case.
--
Glenn Maynard
Reply to: