On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 13:40:24 +0100 Stephen Gran wrote: > This one time, at band camp, Francesco Poli said: > > > > Clause 2c of GPLv2 is already an inconvenience and border-line with > > respect to DFSG-freeness. This is, at least, my humble opinion on > > the matter. > > "Border-line" does not mean that it *fails* the DFSG, but that it's > > *very close* to fail. > > > > Compare with the obnoxious advertising clause of the 4-clause BSD > > license: it's an inconvenience close to fail the DFSG, IMO. But we > > accept it as DFSG-free. > > If you believe this, then you are misreading the DFSG. We explicitly > hold those two licenses up as exemplars of a free software license, to > make it clear what the rest of the DFSG is about. Firstoff, I'm not sure the "BSD" license mentioned in DFSG#10 is the 4-clause BSD. At least, in /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD there's the 3-clause BSD, with no OAC... > If you find the > exemplars are close to failing your idea of what the DFSG means, then > your idea is wrong. DFSG#10 merely states that the listed licenses """are examples of licenses that we consider "free".""" It does not say that those are the best possible DFSG-free licenses, or that they are far from the boundaries of DFSG-freeness. In fact, providing examples that are deep inside the DFSG-freeness region and very far from its boundaries, would not be much useful to "make it clear what the rest of the DFSG is about". Imagine a DFSG#10 that only stated that Debian considers public domain software as DFSG-free: it would not clarify much... -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/testing_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian testing installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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