Re: GPL v3 Draft
On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 05:05:26PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> HTTP and FTP sound pretty equivalent to me. I don't think you'd have any
> problems finding an expert witness to testify to that. HTTP and rsync
> might not be, though. I'm not sure a court would have much difficulty in
> allowing "equivalent" to allow for "well, the source archive is /more/
> capable, we figured that woudl be fine", though.
What about binaries via BitTorrent, source via HTTP? BT would be more
capable than HTTP for many projects' binaries, and HTTP more capable for
source, where a lot of people download binaries and few download source.
They're clearly not equivalent, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable
distribution scheme.
> > > d) They may require that the work contain functioning facilities that
>
> It's interesting that the word they've chosen is "contain", not "retain".
Well, "retain" would imply I can't change it, which would be even worse.
> > > allow users to immediately obtain copies of its Complete Corresponding
> > > Source Code.
> > Such terms make code reuse with non-networked applications extremely
> > inconvenient, and prohibit reuse in embedded environments (eg. a device
> > with 32k of memory, no network facilities, and limited or no visual output).
> > I'd find it disturbing for the FSF to even call such terms free; they're
> > going much further, and condoning it by making it GPL-compatible.
> > (This is, by a wide margin, my biggest objection.)
>
> OTOH, at its absolute worst, it doesn't make GPLv3 stuff that doesn't make
> use of that option non-free.
I think you're the third person to say something along those lines: "be
thankful, it could be a lot worse". It's still endorsing an extremely
onerous class of restriction, implying that it's acceptable, helpful,
and that the classes of application screwed over by it is unimportant.
It's discouraging that people are thankful that's "all it is" ...
--
Glenn Maynard
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