Re: mono and moonlight distribution method make me worried.

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Thank you for the detailed exploration of your understanding of these
issues.

saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com writes:

> Not to conflate the issues of patent licensing with copyright
> licensing, but if […] , the Mono implementation should fail Debian
> Legal's "Desert Island" and "Dissident" tests for DFSG compliance[5]
[…]

Actually I think that, far from being a conflation of issues, what
you've done is an entirely-appropriate (and, by my understanding of
debian-legal, entirely intentional to the purpose) focus on the
effective freedom of the work.

What matters for the DFSG, if I understand correctly, is the effective
freedom that recipients have under the terms the work is offered to
them. Patents, copyrights, license terms: these matter only in so far as
they modify the effective freedom recipients have in a specific work.

So, by focusing on freedom, you've drawn attention to the distinction
that, while the judgement of Debian's ftpmasters seems to have been that
most patent restrictions are *not* to be considered modifications of the
effective freedoms in a work, this is one case that may well be
different.

-- 
 \         “I'm beginning to think that life is just one long Yoko Ono |
  `\   album; no rhyme or reason, just a lot of incoherent shrieks and |
_o__)                                      then it's over.” —Ian Wolff |
Ben Finney