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Re: magnatune.com licensing



On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 02:41:01PM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Kari Pahula <kaol@debian.org> writes:
> > I'm still unsure whether it would run afoul of DFSG6 or DFSG9.  If
> > you were to take the music out of the game and distribute it alone,
> > the NC part would certainly kick in.
> 
> That certainly seems to fail DFSG6. Any part of Debian must be free
> even when a recipient takes it out of Debian.

I don't know about that.  It could be argued that allowing
distribution solely as a part of a distribution is no more
discriminating against a field of endeavour than allowing distribution
only with the corresponding source (eg. what GPL does).

DFSG1 is only concerned about being a "component of an aggregate
software distribution containing programs from several different
sources", which would apply to a distribution.  Is there really
anything concerning the commercial use of a part of Debian apart from
a distribution in DFSG?

What about DFSG9?  The disclaimer doesn't seem to care about what kind
of a distribution it is included with, only that it is included with
an open source game.  But that still contaminates the game itself.
Would that be considered "other software" as mentioned in DFSG9, or
could the game and its data be considered as a whole?

Another concern is that just how deep do Magnatune intent their
permission for use in a distribution go.  They might have something to
say, for example, about a coin-operated Stepmania kiosk using
Magnatune music and Debian, a use for which they would otherwise
require a specific commercial license.  They might have had just home
users using GNU/Linux in desktop use in their mind, not taking into
consideration just how diverse uses distributions have.

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