Re: Amendment: GFDL is compatible with DFSG
daniel@ruoso.com wrote:
> The license is an agreement that regulates one action: the distribution,
> right?
No, unfortunately.
Under copyright law, creating private copies, or private modified copies, is
one of the exclusive privileges of the copyright holder. You need permission
from the copyright holder (or one of the special exemptions such as 'fair
use') in order to do so.
For a license to be considered DFSG-free, debian-legal believes that it should
not restrict anything but distribution. (In fact most of us believe that
copyright should restrict nothing but distribution.) However, under the
current law in every country I know of, a copyright license can restrict
other things, including private copies. (And if you look at the EULA
licenses of most proprietary software, they do restrict them.)
> Is this clause enforcable to your private copies (considering it
> as a bug)?
Yes.
> or just to the copies you distribute...
No.
>
> I mean, I know the license says "the copies you make or distribute",
> but, by definition, wouldn't it apply only to the act of distribution?
No. And there's the problem with this clause, in a nutshell.
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>
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