On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:34:33PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > Would you might clarifying what that grounding is (or pointing me at a > particular message that does so)? I'm currently drafting the second > draft of the QPL summary, and that's one of the few things I'm still > working on: a well-grounded justification from the actual text of the > DFSG. The "fee" angle seems nebulous, and hard to justify; I > more-or-less agree with it, but I need a clear way to justify why it is > only a "royalty or other fee" if it is "paid" to the upstream developer, > and not if it is "paid" to someone you are already distributing the > software to.
"The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software ..." I believe "may not restrict" is the operative phrase; this is a restriction. Clearly, this is a case where judgement needs to be applied; taken to the extreme, it would render almost all licenses non-free. I know that some people will want to argue that any such judgement must follow directly and literally from the DFSG; but I think that's equivalent to arguing that the DFSG is to be interpreted as a set of laws rather than guidelines. (I'd be curious how these people would justify "pet a cat when you distribute" being non-free. I really do have trouble calling "petting a cat" a fee, but it's certainly a restriction.) -- Glenn Maynard
