On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 12:12:53AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:05:29AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > >> The GPL does much the same. If someone distributes GPLed software > >> without complying with section 3 (which gives you various ways in which > >> you have to make source code available to the recipient), then they lose > >> the right to use that GPLed software. We have various licenses that > >> terminate if you do something "wrong" - we've just come to the > >> conclusion that it's acceptable that people not be allowed to do that > >> thing. > > > > That merely reduces to "some licenses exist which are free and some > > exist which are not". This is trivially satisfied by the existence of > > one work under the MIT license (which is free), and one under the MS > > EULA (which is not) - and yes, we've just come to the conclusion that > > one is acceptable and the other not. > > The implication of the post I replied to was that any license that > allows the removal of some set of the rights it grants should be > non-free. The GPL is an obvious counter-example, since it allows you to > lose all rights associated with it. Termination for non-compliance, in a publically redistributed work, is just a reflection of copyright law; it doesn't really change what you can and can't do. (You can always get another licensed copy). Every free license does this, really. The use of a termination clause to introduce other restrictions (other than "you must comply with the license"), rather than simply writing those restrictions in directly, indicates that they probably aren't things you can write in directly, such as restrictions on use (copyright abuse aside for the moment; that doesn't help us, it just employs more lawyers). Such things are non-free restrictions (the set of things you're not allowed to restrict in a copyright license is fairly small). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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