Re: Clause 7d (was Re: Ironies abound (was Re: GPL v3 draft)
On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 11:52:39AM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Well, I did devise a potentially Free alternative for the infamous clause 7d
> after an hour or two's thought.
>
> The key point here was that the clause suffered from specifying means rather
> than ends, which we have diagnosed as a major source of license drafting
> errors. By restricting the functionality of the program and all derivative
> works, it causes endless trouble. Instead, I attempted to rewrite this as a
> restriction which could be imposed on the recipients of the license.
>
> So here it is:
> "7d. They may require that propagation of a covered work which causes it to
> have users other than You, must enable all users of the work to make and
> receive copies of the work."
>
> This leverages the careful definition of "propagate" up top, so that it avoids
> restricting any acitivities which do not require a copyright license.
Neat, although a little hard to understand at first without the context of
what it's referring to (Affero-like clauses). I certainly like it a lot
more than the original, though, for all of the reasons you cited.
> What do other people think of this? It's sort of a forced distribution
> clause, but it only forces distribution to the people you're already allowing
> to use the program. If it's considered acceptable, we could push to have
> this replace the proposed (7d).
I like it, and I think it should be definitely be submitted to the FSF for
consideration.
- Matt
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