Re: XMMS and the new MP3 patent terms

[wpmills@Mills-USA.com (W. Paul Mills)]

joey@kitenet.net (Joey Hess) writes:

> [1  <text/plain; us-ascii (quoted-printable)>]
> Isaac To wrote:
>> If you look at the license of non-free software in the Debian archive and
>> read the copyright file of each of them, you can find that they allow the
>> binary code to be distributed in a Debian CD-ROM to be sold.  They become
>> non-free because of things like source code not provided, commercial *use*
>> (rather than distribution) restrictions, disallowing changes to the code,
>> etc.
>
> Well no, you'll find all of the restrictions you mention, but also
> restrictions on commerical sale.


> Restrictions on commercial sale violate point 1 of the DFSG, and such a
> violation alone is enough to put software into non-free. So be very careful
> before selling CD's of debian's non-free archive.

Thanks, that was my understanding.

And thanks for all the hard work you put in on Debian!

Paul







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