On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 15:59 -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Alternate suggested GR text: > --------------------------- > The Debian Project notes that many license texts are copyrighted works, licensed > only under meta-licenses which prohibit the creation of derivative license texts. > > We consider this to be undesirable. License texts are functional works; reusing > legal text from an earlier license makes a new license much easier to read and > interpret, while brand new legal text is likely to have unexpected results. > This is true even of preambles, which can have an effect on the interpretation of > the license. We encourage all authors of license texts to allow the creation of > derivative license texts. As you can see in many real examples, such as the GPLv3 process, making changes to an existing license can have very unexpected results that are hard to understand. Having more free software licenses will increase the difficulty of reusing code across projects, distributing software together in aggregates (or "distributions", as in our case) and for developers and users to understand the combined effect of the license requirements. So nothing is gained in terms of ease of use or clarity by encouraging the creation of more licenses. Having a multitude of different licenses will create isolated "islands" in the free software community, and Debian should instead encourage the use of existing licenses which allow the community to share code, which are well understood and which perhaps have even been proven to work in court or in out-of-court settlements. I think there is no need for the requested GR. A software license doesn't belong to same domain as the software itself. It hooks into copyright law (and sometimes, patent law) to define the conditions under which the software itself can be used, distributed, modified and so on. The promise of freedom that Debian makes concerns the software components that comprise the Debian system. These components are individually licensed, but the license is the "proof of freedom", not part of the software's function. The files that contain the text of the license are included because it needs to be in writing, and that is the standard practise when distributing software. If you want to make an argument from the standpoint of the DFSG, then please look at §4, which talks about modification restrictions and patch files. It is not uncommon for a free software author to give additional permissions to a license, or to make clarifying statements regarding its interpretation, in addition to the unmodified main license. Examples include Linux and GPL'ed programs that link with OpenSSL, and all software which offer a choice between multiple licenses. Such additional restrictions could be considered "patches" in the domain of software licenses. (Their real effect is of course as vague as the practise of law itself, because they are given in a natural language and are subject to interpretation by a court of law, just like the main license.) Because copyright law ensures that the copyright holder can do this (fulfills the requirement of explicicy), because licenses cannot prevent it (copyright law takes precedence), and because the DFSG considers source + patch to be acceptable, it seems that the issue is already taken care of. -- Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>
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