Glenn Maynard wrote: >On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 10:59:14AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: >> I'm not sure I buy this. Surely the GPL #7 effectively restricts the >> scope of derived works I can make and distribute to those that don't >> infringe upon actively enforced patents? Isn't that a more onerous >> restriction? > >I acknowledge that the DFSG isn't so specific that these tests follow >directly from it. It could be read so strongly that the BSD license >fails (discriminates against the field of removing copyright notices!), >or so loosely that almost anything passes. (That's one of the benefits >of these tests; they help find where the DFSG is actually read.)
Right, that's basically my point. There's plenty of grey fuzziness here, and the QPL falls within it. debian-legal have produced some tests in an attempt to clarify which bits of the grey fuzziness are free or not, but they're effectively arbitrary - they haven't been well discussed within the project as a whole. If we're going to make decisions about the grey fuzziness, we need to do it in a way that includes a much wider range of the developer body. Until that's done, there's no intrinsic reason for debian-legal's idea about the location of the line to be better than anyone else's opinion. >> With the exception of the desert island and dissident scenarios, are >> there any cases where the effects of QPL 6 are worse than those of the >> GPL's requirements? > >That's hard to answer, since those scenarios are specifically designed >to check the effects of clauses like QPL 6. If you mean "what real- >world cases exist that the extreme test cases of the DI and CD test?", >there are plenty, mostly in the "private modifications" category. >See Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >(http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg00174.html). With the possible exception of the dissident test, I don't think any of these are obviously freedom issues. I'm also not sure I buy the dissident test - the GPL allows for a hostile government to declare that it holds a patent on some section of the subversive code and prevent it from being distributed any further. This is potentially worse for the dissident movement as a whole, even if it's better for the individual dissident who wrote the code. They can't comply with the GPL unless they fight the lawsuit, and, uh, well. Oops. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
