Re: Consensus about the Academic Free License ("AFL") v3.0

[Walter Landry <wlandry@caltech.edu>]

Ángel González <keisial@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/06/15 23:22, Walter Landry wrote:
>> Charles Plessy<plessy@debian.org>  wrote:
>>> Here are a few comments about the license.
>>>
>>>   - point 3) is poorly worded, but assuming it is well-intented, it is
>>>   - Free.
>> I would strongly disagree here.  Requiring documentation of any sort
>> in addition to the source code is a big step.  This is not a minor
>> thing.
> I don't think requiring that some documentation is provided with the
> source code, makes it unfree.

Of course it does.  Mandating a minimum quality before releasing
things may be good software practice, but it is decidely unfree.  This
license prevents a certain class of modifications that, in the
original author's eyes, makes things worse.  But later people may
disagree in good faith.  For example, suppose that there is
documentation, but it is out of date to the point where it is
misleading.  This license prevents removing that misleading
documentation.  Even if you write new documentation, you have to
distribute the old documentation as well.

Cheers,
Walter Landry