Francesco Poli wrote: > * question: "Such a restriction is exactly as silly as it sounds. > However, some otherwise free programs come with licenses that specify > that the program must not be sold alone but only as part of an aggregate > software distribution." > Do you regard those programs as free? Is there any consensus on d-l > about this awkward restriction?
I believe the general consensus is that since the requirement is so trivially satisfiable, it is considered free. As long as there is no restriction on how much additional software must be included, the requirement could be satisfied by either: * the rest of the Debian archive, or * the Debian packaging scripts for that package, or * a one byte file containing "w", which would be a valid sh script to run the "w" command. In addition, the program used to satisfy the requirement does not need to be in the same package; it could be available alongside the program on the same site. - Josh Triplett
