Re: For those who care about the GR

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Graham Wilson <graham@mknod.org> writes:

> What sections of the DFSG do you think GFDL documents without invariant
> sections fail?

I've been thinking a lot about this issue, and I think it basically
revolves around one's interpretation of the first two points of the DFSG:

| Free Redistribution
| 
|     The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
|     selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
|     software distribution containing programs from several different
|     sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such
|     sale.
| 
| Source Code
| 
|     The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in
|     source code as well as compiled form.

The question is, basically, what do "allow distribution" and "may not
restrict" mean?  To take a more obvious example, consider a software
package released under a license that says:

  Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
  documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
  provided that distribution of the software is only done on Mondays and
  the software is not redistributed on any other day of the week.

Obviously, the Debian project could not redistribute such software for
purely practical reasons, but is that license DFSG-free?

I don't buy the arguments from "No Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavor."  I think the logical argument required to conclude that this
provision would fail that test based on fields of endeavor that require
working on other days of the week is too convoluted to hold up.

My feeling is that the first two points of the DFSG imply some sort of
unstated "reasonableness" standard on the restrictions on distribution.
We allow the GPL, so obviously we allow *some* restrictions, such as the
GPL requirements about accompanying source code.  Equally obviously, in my
opinion, we don't allow *any* restriction that's compatible with the rest
of the DFSG; I think my Monday-only license is compatible with the rest of
the DFSG (and even if not, I think it's obvious that you could fiddle with
such an idea to come up with one that is), but I still think that it fails
the DFSG as a whole.

Assuming you buy this argument, the next obvious question is then whether
the restrictions on redistribution in the GFDL fail that fuzzy
"reasonableness" test.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>