On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 12:08:54AM +0200, martin f krafft wrote: > I am working on it. In the mean time, let me present the authors > argument for the QPL. He is basically afraid of a fork, which he > argues is easier than cooperation. He's probably right. He wants > there to be one libcwd, and only one libcwd, and no "competition" > from projects building up on years of his work. > > I can completely understand this line of reasoning, and I find it > hard to argue against that. If you have convincing arguments, share > them with me (or just post them here, I sent the thread link to the > author).
Freedom to fork is completely fundamental to free software; this is integral to DFSG#3. Allowing other authors to "compete" using your source is also fundamental to free software. I don't quite understand this, though: the QPL doesn't prevent forking. If it did, there would probably be a much more serious DFSG-freeness problem. > You and I, we agree that the QPL should go away and be replaced by > a truly free licence. However, unless we find a licence that > accomodates DFSG-freeness and the author's wish for legal protection > against forks, it's going to be hard. These goals are completely incompatible. > I have proposed to him to consider creating a license of his own, > which would basically allow everything except the incoporation of > the code into another project with the same goals as libcwd. We'll > see what comes. This would be DFSG-unfree. -- Glenn Maynard
