Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg> writes:
> Suppose we have a license X that makes use of this rule of DFSG. In
> particular the X license gives us only the following permissions with
> respect to the source code:
> 1. Permits to distribute and build unmodified copies of the source
> of the program.
> 2. Permits to distribute "patch files". It is not necessary to
> require the distribution of the "patch files" together with the
> original source code even though DFSG seams to allow such a
> requirement.
> 3. Permits to use the "patch files" for the purpose of modifying
> the sources of the program at build time.
> Suppose that the works A and B are covered by X and C is a combined work
> based on A and B. Under these conditions the sources of C can not be
> distributed because theyr distribution form should have simultaneously
> the form sources_of_A+patches_for_A and sources_of_B+patches_for_B and
> this is impossible. (The formal proof of this impossibility is too
> abstract, but I hope the following analisys will make it clear.)
What is the point of all this again?
Even if I buy your analysis, which I don't (it's resting on the assumption
that there's some way to phrase the license that disallows a patch to be a
derived work of both A and B at the same time, and I don't see where
you're getting that), it's irrelevant. The DFSG doesn't require that
arbitrary derived works may be made from any two pieces of software in the
archive. We have quite a bit of software that is otherwise free which
cannot be combined with arbitrary other pieces of software. Consider
OpenSSL and any GPL-covered program, for instance. That doesn't make
either of them non-free.
So I don't understand what you're trying to get at, or what possible
relevance this theoretical discussion could have to anything else we're
talking about.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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