Re: [Fedora-legal-list] The license of OpenMotif (Open Group Public License)
On Thu, 2018-10-25 at 22:56 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> Motif has since been released under the LGPL, so this is largely
> of historic interest.
>
> Was the license of OpenMotif ever submitted to OSI?
>
> <http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/license/>
>
> Debian clearly considered it non-DFSG-compliant, but I can't find a
> discussion why this was the case.
>
> In the FAQ, the Open Group wrote:
>
> > QUESTION:
> >
> > Does the Open Group Public License for Motif meet the Open Source
> > Guidelines?
> >
> > ANSWER:
> >
> > No. The Open Group Public License for Motif grants rights only to
> > use the software on or with operating systems that are themselves
> > Open Source programs. In restricting the applicability of the
> > license to Open Source platforms this does not meet term 8 of the
> > Open Software Definition (http://www.opensource.org/osd.html).
>
> <http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/faq.html>
>
> I find this surprising. The license is not worded in such a way that
> it is specific to a particular distribution: any free software
> distribution will do.
If I had to guess...
DFSG#9: License Must Not Contaminate Other Software
"The license must not place restrictions on other software that is
distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license
must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium
must be free software."
We can argue about what "distribute" means here, I suppose. Also #8:
"all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same
rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the Debian
system". So if it's not as free everywhere as it would be in Debian,
it's not free enough for Debian.
- ajax
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