Re: Clause 7d (was Re: Ironies abound (was Re: GPL v3 draft)

[Gervase Markham <gerv@mozilla.org>]

Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> 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."

I like this, together with Arnoud's suggestions. But Walter is right;
the devil is in the detail of defining "user". In order for the clause
to maintain the "market in addon clauses" which the FSF has talked
about, you have to leave it up to the specific clause to define where
the line is. And then debian-legal will have the lovely job of judging
27 different variants and deciding which ones are free.

There's also a comment discussing potential revisions of this clause on
their wiki-like thing. It has my suggestion in, which is along the same
lines, but I like yours better.
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/rt/readsay.html?id=204

I think it's inevitable that, whatever this clause ends up like, it'll
be possible to write a non-free additional term with it. But we can at
least get it phrased in a way which makes it possible to, and encourages
people to write free terms.

Gerv