Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Do you think that the QPL without section 6 is a free software > > licence? > > I am tentatively in favor of that, yes.
> > If YES, how do you argue that section 6 detracts from the permissions > > granted by section 3? > > They do not, since they apply to two different clases of software. That seems like a contradiction to me. You seem to be saying that the QPL without section 6 is a free licence, section 6 does not detract from the permissions granted by section 3, and yet we have to look at section 6 in detail to tell whether the QPL is free. How does that work? > What is your argumentation to ignore the above and makes as if modified work > and linked works are one and the same thing ? It looks to me like section 6 grants some additional permission in the case of mere linking. Without section 6 the entire work would have to be QPL (with a licence grant to the initial developer). With section 6 only the part that contains the original software has to be QPL; the rest can have any free licence, more or less, except that there's an additional requirement (6c) that might be problematic. So the argument here is that the DFSG requires the conditions in QPL 3 to be acceptable, and if they are, then the DFSG is satisfied and we don't have to look at QPL 6. I'm concerned that you might be heading in the direction of claiming that Debian requires explicit permission to link in addition to general permission to distribute modified versions, in which case you are presumably about to claim that BSD licences are non-free because they don't have a "linking" section.
