On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 10:28:55PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > John Galt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > I missed the "with or without modification" in the header, so thought this > > clause was the only thing granting permission for derived works. Had that > > been the case, DFSG 3 would be the controlling consideration and fail. > > But the permission for derivate works doesn't derive only from this > > clause, so I was wrong. However, I AM going to point out that Bushnell's > > idea of "added constraint" for the Diablo license could concievably > > apply to this clause, and since there's no real division between > > acceptable added constraint and unacceptable added constraint, could be > > read to void DFSG 4 > > Um, this actually isn't usually taken to be a problem. The added > constraint in the Diable license requires a person to support an OS > they might not want to, to do a lot of extra work. The added > constraint here is that you can't choose a name which might conflict. > > Naming rules have generally not been thought to violate free > softwareness; TeX is a classic example.
Actually, LaTeX is an interesting borderline case, according to RMS. <quote src="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html";> This license contains complex and annoying restrictions on how to publish a modified version, including one requirement that falls just barely on the good side of the line of what is acceptable: that any modified file must have a new name. The reason this requirement is acceptable for LaTeX is that LaTeX has a facility to allow you to map file names, to specify ``use file bar when file foo is requested''. With this facility, the requirement is merely annoying; without the facility, the same requirement would be a serious obstacle, and we would have to conclude it makes the program non-free. </quote> So names of programs are almost always acceptable (I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't be). But names of files are a more borderline case. sam th --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/ OpenPGP Key: CABD33FC --- http://samth.dyndns.org/key DeCSS: http://samth.dynds.org/decss
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