On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:35:49PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Matthew Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >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.
This is a slightly different problem to that of a local law which says "you can't do that". I'm not distributing prohibited technology to an embargoed location by choice. I never thought "hmm, wouldn't it be cool if I sent this to Iran". Instead, the terms of the licence are forcing me to do that. Even worse, there may have been no way I could have known I would later have to break the law at the time I accepted the licence (by distributing my modifications). The author could previously have been in a friendly country, but happen to be in Iran when they request my libraries. I have no way of knowing that my compliance with the licence will some day require me to break the law. It's a downright hideous licence term, and a pretty damn good argument for why forced unrelated distribution is a bad thing. > 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 But it's really dangerous to do so. Allowing such a licence into Debian could result in our users to fall foul of situations just like these. - Matt
