Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > | c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the > | initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, > | then you must supply one.
> The upstream author can request a copy of the items, if they are distributed, > but not openly distributed (in which case he just needs to get the public > version). One could argue again that this would mean a breach of the DFSG #1, > since the right of the author to those software would be considered a fee or > royalty, but the same argumentation as above makes me reject that. I assume "the same argumentation as above" refers to your argument about it not costing anything which you used in the 3b thread. I disagree about it not costing anything. Even if you are entitled to charge for the cost of data transfer there is still the cost of administration. The cost of administration is probably not much, but in many cases it's more than the cost of sending a postcard, and Debian has, I think, always regarded as non-free a licence that requires you to send a postcard to the author. Debian has also regarded petting a cat as a restriction or cost, so I think it would be a big break with tradition to accept 6c as an allowable restriction. In some cases the administration might cost quite a lot, if you need legal approval or if you're on a Deser... sorry, I won't mention that possibility! > Furthermore, the distribution of these items is governed by the QPL 6a and 6b, It's not clear to me that 6c is governed by 6a. I would guess it probably isn't, but it's not worth arguing, because the cost of administration is probably a bigger burden anyway. So I see two chances of getting 6c past debian-legal: (1) Claim that the cost of administration is negligible. I think this goes against tradition. (2) Claim that the developer can avoid 6c altogether by making sure the items are available to the general public. Unfortunately, there's no precedent that I know of for Debian regarding as free a requirement to make software available to the general public when it is distributed, so you'd have to try and build a consensus for that rather than argue legalistically. In either case you'd still have to cope with the privacy problem, which you don't seem to have mentioned in your summary. It's not (in my opinion) implied by the DFSG, but there seems to be quite a lot of support for the idea that a free software licence should permit private distribution within a group.
