On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 11:57:38PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > This comment has just clarified something that's been rattling around > half-formed in my head for a little while now, regarding Free licences. I > don't know if it's been raised before, but I think it bears discussion: > > "A licence cannot be Free if it disallows actions which, in the absence of > acceptance of the licence, would be allowed by Copyright law, or imposes > restrictions not present by Copyright law". > > To put it another way (and closer to Brian's wording), if the licence isn't > simply a grant of permission but requires things of me which I would > otherwise be allowed to do, it can't be free.
As far as I (and d-legal, I believe) understand it, to disallow these things, you need to form a contract (an EULA). Most restrictions which require this are non-free. I wouldn't quite go so far as to generalize it to "all"; it's probably better to look at the restrictions on their own merits, which will usually also show them to be non-free (and in a more direct way than "this probably isn't enforcable under copyright law alone"). Attempting to go being copyright law is a good hint that something may be wrong, though. -- Glenn Maynard
