Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can deal with the line of reasoning that says "the 4-clause BSD > license would be non-free, because forbidding anyone mentioning the > software in banner ads, etc. is insane, but due to its widespread use, > an exception was made for this license". (It means that there should > be no fundamental issue with removing it from DFSG#10 with a GR some > day, once the license is no longer so prevelent as it was when the > DFSG was drafted.)
There's no evidence whatsoever that that's what was intended. Checking the discussion, nobody even seemed to question whether the BSD license would be considered DFSG-free or not. > I do have problems with "forbidding mention of the software in banner > ads is horrible, but we have to consider the restriction "free" because > it's part of a license in DFSG#10, which trumps all else (and therefore > we must allow restrictions similar to it, such as an explicit "don't > mention the product in banner ads"--a trivial extrapolation from the > OAC, by my understanding of it.) That's not the way the reasoning should work. The DFSG describe certain conditions that software has to meet. DFSG 10 makes it clear (though indirectly) that the 4-clause BSD license was meant to be a free license - it's an example, not a prescriptive comment. The authors of the DFSG, and those who voted to accept them (along with the social contract) intended it to be clear that the 4-clause BSD license was free. Things have changed since then, and we've tightened up in various ways as people came up with new issues with existing licenses. But I don't think there's any way that anyone can claim that 4-clause BSD has issues that people didn't know about at the time of the writing of the DFSG. > Of course, the question of whether DFSG#10 is a grandfather clause (the > former) or an interpretation guideline (the latter) is a long-standing > one which will probably never be resolved. (I don't think it was > initially *intended* as either, since--by my far-from-first-hand > understanding--it wasn't even intended to be a clause.) The archives of debian-private are instructive. It's a shame that the discussion didn't take place more openly. My point is pretty much this - it's possible to claim that Debian's standards of freedom aren't changing, merely our understanding of licenses. That's fine, and a logical consequence of that is that some licenses may be decreed non-free. But trying to extend that argument to 4-clause BSD is a reach. It was an old and well-established license at the time of the writing of the social contract. I agree that considering the 4-clause BSD license non-free nowadays probably wouldn't lose us anything of any great significance, and I agree that it's a pain to deal with. But any attempt to make the 4-clause BSD license non-free is an unambiguous redefinition of Debian's standards of freedom, not a mere reclassification of a license due to a new discovery. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
