Re: a Free Platform License?
Le vendredi 25 novembre 2011 à 12:04 -0500, Clark C. Evans a écrit :
> > If you mean “restrict the recipient of the work so they are
> > not permitted to use the work on proprietary platformsâ€, that
> > is clearly a non-free restriction.
>
> I understand that it's traditional for Free Software to impose
> restrictions primarily as a condition of distribution;
Exactly, they're conditions but not restrictions. And it really seems
that what you're looking to impose with the license are restrictions
that discriminate. I hardly see how such a licensed software could be
free software.
When you license with conditions (such as copyleft), you say: here's my
copyrighted work, you're free to use and modify it as long as you do
this and that. That is very different from: here's my copyrighted work,
you're free to use and modify but only on such platforms.
In the first case, the licensee is just required to do things, in the
latter case, the licensee is forbidden to do things.
It's a bit like a "non-commercial" restriction, or an "academic-only"
restriction. And those are clearly considered non-free.
It looks like what you're trying to do isn't a license with
restrictions, but a license with a broader condition than the GPL's
copyleft. I think it would be hard to come up with such a license that'd
be effective (first because of the constraints of copyright law, second
because the line between condition and restrictions would be very easily
crossed).
> Personally, if I were addressing this in a vacuum, I'd release
> with a BSD style license having a one line clause that restricts
> usage to only free & open platforms. This would accomplish my
> objective in a clear, if naive manner. However, I realize that
> this licensing approach is unacceptable to many here and hence
> wouldn't be accepted by Debian (would it be OK in non-free?).
How would you define "free & open platforms" then? And if that's in
non-free, it means your program wouldn't be part of that "free & open
platform." Which means your license would isolate your program of any
growing community of other programs (because they couldn't be based on
your program because it's not part of the free & open platforms
category).
> All that said, I did write exactly what I meant:
>
> | Would Debian consider a "Free Platform License" (FPL) derived
> | from the AGPLv3, but with the "System Library" exception
> | removed (as well as the GNU specific prologue)?
How's removing the exception effective in what you are trying to
achieve? People can install a free system library on a proprietary
platform and then software licensed as such (gplv3 minus system library
exception) could link to it, but installed on a proprietary platform,
which fails at doing what you're trying to do.
In the end, I am really not sure a license is what's needed to make free
software operating systems grow (and I am also not sure yet another
license is needed at all. Copyleft is already essential to achieve
that).
Best regards
Hugo
--
Hugo Roy im: hugo@jabber.fsfe.org
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