--On Mon, Nov 30, 1998 8:03 am -0600 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Milan Zamazal writes: > >> This makes SWI Prolog non-free because of one its licensing clause: > >> 6. If you base research on SWI-Prolog and publish on this research, >> you must include appropriate acknowledgements and references to >> SWI-Prolog in your publication. > > IMHO that is a restriction on use and fails the present DFSG. It is also > so vague as to be impossible to comply with.
Interesting. To the extent that your research is a 'derived' work of SWI-Prolog, this restriction is perfectly admissible. Also, it is clearly routine academic behaviour to do so. A piece of research is worthless unless it explains how to replicate the results, and part of this explanation will necessarily be 'appropriate acknowledgements and references'. So, in some sense this is a 'non-restriction'. However, it could be construed to fail the current DFSG. Maybe we should exempt this (it doesn't impinge on the freeness of the software, as a piece of software). Jules P.S. Yes, it should be on -legal. I'm maintaining the CC to -devel to give all those on -devel who haven't noticed -legal's existence yet a chance to subscribe. I suggest we drop the -devel CC on the next response. /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | Debian GNU/Linux - "Microsoft *does* have a year 2000 problem - | | and we're it!" (paraphrased from IRC) | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/