On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 12:56:50AM -0400, Walter Landry wrote: > Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Walter Landry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Under the GPL, the government can just pass a law requiring that all > > >> distributed source code be provided to the government.
> > >Except that there are no such governments. Get back to me when that > > >actually happens. > > If there were such a government, would you question the GPL's freedom? > In that country, it would not be free. I disagree. This is not relevant to the freedom of the license, because it's an additional restriction imposed by a *third party* (in this case, a government), and not something that can be fixed by additional permission grants from the licensor. Free software licensing presupposes that the copyright holder has the ability to grant you certain freedoms over the code. When this is not the case due to outside forces (e.g., patent holders or averse governments), we should not view this as a flaw in the license if this license gives us the *author's* permission to exercise those freedoms with the code. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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