On Sat, 04 Feb 2006, olive wrote:
Don Armstrong wrote:
When we discuss them, we can discern between the two cases, but
it's not appropriate for Debian to bend its own guidelines to allow
in works which do not meet the requirements of the DFSG simply
because we think it would be nice to include them.
But there are a lot of case where this is not the case and I think
people claim that the license violates the DFSG just because they do
no like it.
For me at least, there are a lot of licenses which I don't like which
I believe don't fall afoul of the DFSG. I assume there are others who
feel similarly. I try very hard to make it clear when I'm voicing
dissatisfaction with the license, and when I'm pointing out part of
the license which is DFSG incompatible.
There is no rule which say that "every bits of a file can be
modified"; but there are law which says that you must be able to use
your freedom.
I'm not sure what else you can reasonably interpret DFSG 3 as meaning.
Debian has already accepted resctriction similar to the GFDL
(acknoledgement of the BSD license etc,...); the invariant sections
are in nature not more (these are acknoledgement for the GNU
project; and yes it a bit longer).
Save for the fact that they're not invariant, or you don't actually
have to include those sections. [And yes, many of us do have problems
with GPL 2c as well.]
I think of a license of a file in x.org which prohibit to export it
to Cuba. This seems clearly be a discrimination and moreover it
fails the dissident test (even if in this case the dissidant might
be a U.S citizen; not a chinese one). For someone (like me) living
outside the U.S. this is even more flagrant because to export goods
to Cuba is perfectly legal from my country.
If this were actually stated in the license, it would be non free.
Indeed, if clause 8 of GPLv2 were ever activated for a piece of
software in Debian, I think it would become non-free as well, DFSG §10
be damned.
As others have explained in this thread, that's a legal export
requirement imposed on people by the US government which has been
conflated with the licence by mere proximity instead of intent.