On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:26:42 +0100 Gervase Markham wrote: > Francesco Poli wrote: > > Clause 5d in GPLv3draft3 is basically unchanged with respect to > > previous drafts. It's worse than the corresponding clause 2c in > > GPLv2... :-( [...] > > I would like to see clause 5d dropped entirely. > > I agree that it's not very good. Given that persuading the FSF to drop > the clause entirely at this late stage is unlikely, can we come up > with a form of wording to suggest which at least makes it no worse > than GPLv2? Well, I think that clause 2c of GPLv2 is already suboptimal (even though not so bad to become non-free) and should have been weakened in GPLv3, rather than strengthened, as it currently is... Anyway, we *could* perhaps try to rephrase it in a weaker form, assuming that the FSF won't drop it, but could consider weakening it, instead... I don't know whether that will actually be the case, but maybe it's worth trying. It won't be easy, though: the simplest solution remains dropping it entirely, IMO. I will try and find the time to draft something and come back later (or at least, I hope...). > > > I would be happy to see all these "permissions to add restrictions" > > entirely dropped from Section 7. > > > > ===> not a Freeness issue, but a great loss, since, if this > > mechanism is kept in the final GPLv3 text, GPL-compatibility will no > > longer be a DFSG-compliance guarantee... :-( > > Can you give an example of a DFSG-non-compliant term that could be > introduced under section 7? What concerns me is an "invariant" text that could be introduced by exploiting clause 7b: see below for more details. > > >> b. requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices > >> or author attributions in source or object code forms of material > >> added by you to a covered work; or > > > > :::: Kills copyleft: are these the cousins of GFDL's Invariant > > Sections? > > > > What exactly is a "reasonable legal notice"? What exactly is an > > "author attribution"? It seems that these terms are not defined > > anywhere in the license. I'm concerned that they could be > > interpreted in a broad sense and allow people to take a GPLv3'd work > > and add some sort of invariant long text that nobody will ever be > > able to remove or modify... > > I can't see any judge with a decent grasp of English or the notion of > a "legal notice" or "author attribution" permitting the attachment of > the GNU Manifesto to a work under this clause. Can you give a > concrete example of a problematic situation you see? I cannot depict a specific scenario off the top of my head, but my alarm bell rang as soon as I saw the word "preservation" coupled with undefined (and hence vague) terms as "reasonable legal notice" and "author attribution". Since the clause does not seem to be designed as sufficiently narrow to avoid posing nasty problems in the future, I assumed the worst case scenario and concluded that the clause will bite. That was my line of reasoning. > > BTW, does this section make GPLv3 compatible with the license of > OpenSSL? I don't know: I didn't check, as it was not my primary concern. > > >> 13. Use with the Affero General Public License. > > > > :::: Kills copyleft: compatibility with a yet unknown license > > > > This section introduces a form of compatibility with a license that > > is yet unreleased and thus possibly non-free: the Affero General > > Public License, version 2. The AfferoGPL v1 is, in my opinion, a > > non-free license, due to its clause 2(d). I won't restate all the > > reasons for my conclusions (more details in > > http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/rt/readsay.html?filename=gplv3-draft-3&id=1663). > > As a consequence, I have few hopes that the forthcoming version 2 of > > the AfferoGPL will be a free license. > > > > Being compatible with an unknown (and thus possibly non-free) > > license destroys the copyleft mechanism of the GPLv3. > > "Destroys" is a bit strong. I admit that "weakens" would have been a more appropriate term... > This clause is a permission to link; > therefore, as I read it, the GPLv3 copyleft weakens to an "LGPL"-style > copyleft in the case of linking with the Affero GPL. Each bit of code > remains under its own license. Yes, and I dislike it: it sounds as (and probably actually is...) an endorsement of the AfferoGPL v2 by the FSF. I don't want to open the can of worms of the FSF legal theory of linking, hence, let's assume for the sake of the argument that it's a legally sound theory. If this is the case, I don't want a general exemption for a license that will probably be non-free (and will for sure be GPLv3-incompatible, only artificially linkable due to this section and a corresponding one in its text). P.S.: Please do not reply to me, Cc:ing the list, as I didn't asked you to do so. I am a debian-legal subscriber and would rather avoid receiving the same message twice. Reply to the list only (as long as you want to send a public response). See http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct for more details. Thanks. -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/etch_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian etch installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
Attachment:
pgpJnNB0Y7GhE.pgp
Description: PGP signature