On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 09:33:53PM +0100, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: > [...] > > My personal opinion is that this is ok. This does not conflict with > the DFSG because this is not software we are talking about and until > now I haven't read a convincing argument that is does indeed relate to > the "fields of endevour" clause (DFSG 6). Starting from a very na?ve > position, yes, this is saying "you cannot use this for X", but the > particular case in question makes it hard to come up with a realistic > example. At the time of the original discussion, -legal seemed to > agree that this is ok (IOW, noone actually said those terms make the > license non-free). >
If an entity who has a patent related to some software includes with that software a statement which indicates that they will not use their patent to convince a government to forcibly prevent others from using the subject of the patent, it can not possibly make the software license non-free. In fact, the software license is no more or less Free than it was to begin with. Agreeing not to enforce a patent is a nice gesture. When that gesture extends equally to all software under a particular set of licenses, it is both compatible with the GNU GPL and our Debian Free Software Guidelines. -- Brian Ristuccia [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
