On 2004-07-20 03:06:22 +0100 Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
DFSG 1) it was claimed that giving the linked items back to upstream
on
request is considered a fee, which may invalidate this licence. How
much of
this claim is realistic, and does it constitute a fee ? After all,
you lose
nothing if you give it to upstream, so it doesn't cost you.
You lose your control over the work, if you are obliged to license it
freely or give it to upstream. 6b kicks in, requiring us to license it
freely to them. This seems particularly ironic, as author control over
the work is often given as a motive for using the QPL, which is
something they seem to be denying other authors.
I'm still thinking whether this is clearly a fee, but I'm not sure why
you claim it would invalidate the licence.
So my understanding is that this only applies with the stuff that
links to the
QPL covered work. Which would mean that the QPL covered work is a
library.
When I read this bit first of all, I thought "wow, elegant hack".
Sadly, it doesn't work, as it limits permitted modifications, because
we could never make a QPL'd part of ocaml into a library. I think most
-legal readers get upset about that not satisfying DFSG 3.
Now, if the LGPL is applied to all ocaml libraries, including modified
ocamls present and future, we have an elegant hack to remove the QPL
from ocaml. ;-)
Also, this applies to stuff not covered by the licence that links with
it. Is this contamination of other software? (Compare DFSG 9)
I will go over the DFSG points in a while, but let's first mention
another
point. Altough the Social contract places our priorities at our users
and
free software, where do the upstream author enter in consideration ?
The
upstream authors without with debian would hardly exist.
If you feel the SC inadequately protects upstream authors, then maybe
you want to change the SC.
[...] may fear the violation of the ocaml licence by entities such as
sun or microsoft, which would gain from the ocaml technology in both
java and
C#, and fear that a court of venue in the US may render any chance of
getting
justice void, given the money governed US legal system. [...]
AIUI, they could sue the French arms of Sun or Microsoft and keep the
venue in France, even without this clause. I hope they have a more
realistic motivation.
Well, nothing in the DFSG makes mention of this kind of legal
problems, so we
can hardly claim that this would make it DFSG-non-free, even though
we may
have more or less justified to think so.
My current thought is that it is a DFSG 1 problem, resticting free
redistribution, but I'm still listening.
--
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