On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 01:34:04PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > If we write the amendment as something like "A licence must not place undue > cost or inconvenience on a licensee in order to comply with the licence" > it's much broader and covers choice of venue as one of it's effects. It > also covers any other instance where the license can make it prohibitively > expensive to actually take advantage of the freedoms granted. DFSG #1 is > interpreted in such a way as to be our defence against that, but it's not > intuitive. Unfortunately it has potential side-effects and doesn't > necessarily make it clear enough that that's what's being prohibited. For > instance, "undue cost" could be argued to not apply for choice of venue > because the cost involved is not undue. On the other hand, compelled > distribution of source (GPL) could be seen as an undue cost. It's a very > difficult line to get right. Whatever we put in writing can be attacked by
It can help, though. There are multiple discussions going on here: 1: "does DFSG#1 only prohibit fees, or other stuff, too? What's a fee? Where's my dictionary?"; and 2: "is choice of venue an onerous restriction?" I believe #2 is the important question, and that #1 is rules lawyering, a waste of time. We might be able to reduce #1 with modifications like these, making it clear that: no, this isn't a bright line test, and yes, judgement is required. I don't think these types of amendments are what David and Steve M have in mind, though; I think they're aiming to reduce #2, as well, and that's hard to do without either special cases, or new generalizations that may backfire. -- Glenn Maynard
