Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In any case, in the US a contract has a few requirements inconsistent > with a free license:
This, by the way, is the kind of thing that should be talked about. Still, I am not clear on why these things *must* be non-free. > * A meeting of minds: the license issuer need never receive > communication from the licensee, so how can there be meeting of the > minds? That's an interesting requirement that is apparently different in different countries; in some places, it seems, you can post an offer, and then people can take you up on that offer and forrm a contract with you even though the communication was one-directional. Aside from that, I would think it would be free if the basis of this "meeting of minds" requirement were the communication with the guy giving you the software. So long as I can pass on the software, and the receivers can pass it on transitively, so what if we theoretically form a new contract at each step of the way? DFSG 7 talks about this kind of situation, but I don't know if that is what DFSG 7 has in mind. This situation does *seam* to be free and open source to me. > * A consideration: if the license document specifies consideration to > the licensor, the license can't be free. Certainly it's a problem if the consideration is sending $1000 to the author. However, DFSG1 says merely that you cannot charge a royalty or fee; it does not say that you must require nothing at all, if I am reading it correctly. Consider two cases where a required consideration might still leave the license agreement being free. First, the consideration may be something completely acceptible for a free software license, e.g. "you will include source code with any distribution of the program." This may be less trivial than it sounds: the agreement may grant you full rights but then say you are obligated not to use them all. More interestingly, the consideration might be really minor. Suppose it says "you must email the author before distributing a modified version, provided that sending one email is free for you." This is certainly annoying, but it's very minor and it seems to fit DFSG. Lex NotALawyer Spoon
