On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:29:25PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > > But again, the DFSG makes no provision whatsoever for this kind of things.
> > So in general, you believe it's ok to inflict all kinds of risks on > > users who exercise their rights on software in main, so long as the DFSG > > doesn't explicitly prohibit them? > No, but these are hypothetical risks which i have some doubts will happen. > Like they say here, 0-risk is impossible to obtain, there will always be some > risk. Still the DFSG are our guidelines for what we consider free, if lawsutis > are part of it, we need to add a new DFSG entry about it, and go through the > voting and 3:1 majority requirement and everything. > Or clearly add a note to the DFSG that we feel free to add any random > additional constraint at our whim. > > Forget these inane arguments about what the DFSG does or doesn't > > prohibit; why would we WANT to expose our users to licenses like this? > Why not ? And do you consider seriously that the risk involved is a real one ? > Or just empty speculation ? Is the risk of being sued for including small amounts of GPL code in your binary-only application a real risk? What's the difference between a "real" risk and a "hypothetical" risk, until someone actually gets sued? The bright line that most followers of debian-legal appear to conform to is "the licenses say that you can exercise the freedoms listed in the DFSG". This is not zero-risk, because nothing in life is zero-risk; the copyright holder could be acting in bad faith, or you could be sued by a third party for patent infringement, or even for copyright infringement. The point is that we don't want our users to be exposed to risks *by the license*. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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