* Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [040720 13:54]: > >The QPL is bad news in yet another way. Do we need a DFSG basis for "forces > >people to break the law"? > > Mm. It forces people to break the law if they exercise certain freedoms. > China requires (used to require?) licensing of imported cryptography > software. If it were GPLed, distributing modified versions would be > illegal under copyright law (you couldn't actually satisfy the GPL's > requirements) and if the recipient didn't have a license, under > anti-crypto laws. Israel used to have similar provisions. > > It's an interesting question. How prevelant does a law have to be before > we believe that being obliged to break it becomes non-free?
I think that should not be a question of prevalence, but wether the law allows free software. In a world where everything was free software, and noone would wanted to give any piece of software to anyone else without giving the source code and does not forbid to use, modify and so forth, would any group be or person or field of endeavor be discriminated, i.e. no longer be able to exercise those rights because restrictions in the licence make it impossible to comply? > Personally, > I'd be inclined to say that countries that limit exports of technology > are broken and we should treat them as if they don't exist, even though > the UK is one of them. Maybe I should make more use of my Irish > citizenship. We may ignore the countries, but are we allowed to ignore the users within it? Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
