Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 09:19:40AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: >> On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:50:15AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: >> > On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 06:01:50PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: >> > > On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 11:27:05PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Geez. >> 1) be able to take other people's modifications proprietary. That's fine >> for them, it's just non-free for us. > > Oh, ok. do we have a consensus on that ? could you point out why in clear > points of the DFSG, and not some far fetched and controversed island paradise > metahpors. Notice that the FSF doesn't seem toi think so, and it would make > the BSD non-free, would it not ? I think there's a clear consensus that that's non-free, as it's a substantial cost imposed on those distributing modifications. It is a fee. Normally, I distribute my software under copyleft. If somebody wants to do something proprietary with it, they must pay me a lot of money. INRIA wants to pay my instead with a license to distribute modifications to their software. Clearly, the license I'm giving them under QPL 3(b) is a fee. >> OR >> >> 2) Wants to be able to relicence OCaml to others under a proprietary licence >> for a fee, in order to fund further development. That's even finer, and can >> be done by either writing it all themselves (and hence having nobody else's >> licence to worry about), or getting copyright assignments or >> totally-permissive grants from everyone whose contributions they incorporate >> into OCaml. > > Well, sure. or maintaining a dual tree, which is a pain. Remember, the ocaml > team is at best 6 or so people, without legal advisories (i was told some year > back that the INRIA legal council is a joke with regard to that kind of > stuff). They need not maintain a dual tree -- just not integrate into their tree work which they don't have the license to use as they wish. That means they probably don't get my modifications, because I will only give my modifications to INRIA under a copyleft. > Well, anyway, ... Ok, i will follow advice, and start a new thread. abotu this > whole mess. > >> 1) is non-free, no matter what licence they use. 2) doesn't require the QPL >> (which I feel is non-free for a variety of reasons). > > Ah, and the FSF strongly encouraging me to give them copyright of any > contribution to an FSF project is not ? That's right. The FSF won't distribute your work unless you give them copyright. That's fine. They give you a free license to distribute your work -- modifications to their work -- as you please. That they also happen to want donations of money, time, and programs is not non-free. > But was fine three years ago when they chose it, and this had some influence > about their chosing of it. What thrust will they have in our decisions if we > don't stand by it, especially as i am sure most people participating in this > have not read previous threads about this issue ? And we thought their software had no RC bugs three years ago. What trust should we have in them to write releasable, bug-free code? There are bugs in licenses, just like bugs in code. Sometimes they take a while to find. > How would you have reacted if someone came with a bug report out of nothing > like Brian did, without pointing to this discussion, You already have mail from me -- now weeks old -- explaining that I wasn't aware of this discussion; I read the license file for ocaml before modifying it, and was horrified to see a clearly non-free license there. So I filed a bug. As a Debian user, I read the DFSG and expected I'd be able to exercise those rights with respect to Debian-shipped software. That I can't do so with respect to ocaml is a serious bug. If I'd treated that as free software and made the modifications I want, I'd have been put in a position of violating the QPL or violating other contracts. So, as it happens, I'm working with PLT Scheme, an LGPL'd compiler, instead. Niiice code, too. > And Brian was not really tactfull either. > Well, if i have been offensive and rude to an email which was constructive i > apologize for it. for the rest, well i have been under Branden's english and > discuss things in email school, so what do you expect. And any rude language i > use here, i did learn on debian mailing lists. >> You are aware that Brian !== Brian? Brian Thomas Sniffen, your primary >> combatant in this thread, is not Brian M. Carlson, the author of the snippet >> you quoted above? > > Oh .... , well, i am really sorry about this. and i apologize to Brian about > this > confusion. shame on me for not noticing ... but then it is hard to notice such > details after many hundred of emails. Of course. It's easy to get confused when facing so much traffic. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
