On 21/02/12 10:36, MJ Ray wrote:
Does the presence of those two sentences in a README make the software non-free?Yes! Firstly, the paragraph should allow its retention with a different name as the endorser. DFSG 3: Derived Works.
That seems a little hair-splitting. A) I'm not sure it doesn't; you are, of course, allowed to remove the endorsement without being required to do so, and nothing in the text says you can't do that, and replace it with a different one. If you are arguing about the word "paragraph" in sentence 2, would replacing it with "endorsement" get past this little linguistic quibble? :-)
Are you suggesting that the paragraph is subject to copyright, and that the text places a copyright restriction on the paragraph text itself? It's arguable whether that's true, but that argument is not the discussion we are having.
Secondly, it allows retrospective amendment: I'm sure such licences have been rejected in the past (often called the "tentacles of evil" test). Non-permanent licences that could start failing DFSG 1 or 3 at an arbitrary-but-unknown future date are at least a practical problem for stuff that has releases we want to archive forever. This isn't the usual situation for "or any later version" licences because there's the option of continuing with the current version. So, as it makes it non-free, the rest of the posted argument fails.
DFSG 4:"The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software."
Are you saying that if a license requires unilateral renaming, it's OK under DFSG 4, but if it requires renaming under certain circumstances (a less strict requirement), it's not OK under DFSG 4? Or is it OK to require renaming under certain circumstances as long as those circumstances are sufficiently clear at the time of receiving the software?
The first is simply a statement of fact. The second is a requirement for non-misrepresentation, such as in a BSD licence. I don't see any freeness problems with such a statement. You could argue it's a restriction on modification, but it's not - you could, if you chose, remove the sentence at any time. [...]Removal is only one type of modification - a very destructive one at that - whereas we seek permission to modify in other ways, except for cases like the limited stuff in DFSG 4.
I don't think the paragraph restricts modification of itself, or of the rest of the software.
Gerv