[Bill Allombert]
> The DFSG says 'the license must not restrict ...', it does not say
> 'the program must not restrict ...'.
That's a fair point. I chose a bad example indeed.
You still haven't given a reasonable answer to the real point, though,
that being: "field of endeavor" does not mean "a field where some
people in the field may want to do specific things, which other people
outside the field may or may not want to do as well". There is nothing
field-specific about "needing" to encrypt your hard drive. Some
security professionals may want to do this, some may not want to. Some
people who are not security professionals may want to do this, others
may not want to. Nobody can say "the only way a security firm can
possibly use Debian is to encrypt every hard drive of every computer in
the whole company".
To be fair, you are not the first person to misunderstand DFSG #5 and
DFSG #6 this way, and try to apply them to things they do not apply to.
It was a favorite tactic on the debian-legal list, last I checked ---
which was some time ago.
Compare the following two statements:
- If you are XXX [DFSG #5] or your business is involved in YYY [#6],
then you cannot use this software, or you cannot use it the same
way other people can use it.
- You cannot do ZZZ, no matter who you are, no matter what your
business is about.
Can you see the difference? The first is what DFSG #5 and #6 attempt
to prevent. The second is not, although many people think it is.
The problem is, if DFSG #5 and #6 mean what you think they mean, they
effectively prevent _all_ license restrictions whatsoever. Because if
you are creative enough, for any restriction ZZZ, you can find _some_
group of people _somewhere_, or _some_ field of endeavor, which you can
tenuously link to _some_ reason ZZZ is a problem for them. Though the
chain of logic can get quite convoluted, as we see in the present case.
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