Walter Landry wrote: > I haven't seen anyone seriously dispute my analysis in > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg01705.html > > that there is a fee involved (you questioned whether it was an > acceptable fee, not whether it was a fee at all). Matthew Palmer > mentioned it again here > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg01739.html > > and there was no response. I also mentioned it here > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/08/msg00131.html > > Unless someone comes up with something now, the argument looks pretty > clear.
I strongly disagree that such clauses are non-free. Consider for a moment a license that said something like "You must either distribute under this license with source, or under a proprietary license without source.", (where the license is otherwise BSD/MIT/X11-like, and with a definition for "proprietary" given somewhere in the license). This would be a form of "copyleft", that requires derived works to maintain the "right" for _everyone_ to make proprietary derived works. I think such a license would still be Free, albeit annoying. For someone who only cares about Free Software, the additional permission is useless, and only serves to allow others to take the work proprietary. Now consider a similar license with one change: only the original developer may release under a proprietary license. Such a change reduces the number of people who can take the software proprietary. It seems like if the case above is a Free license, then this one would be as well, and would actually be preferable. Finally, it seems like this is covered by the DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html) point 12e, which says that it is fine for some people to have more rights than others, as long as everyone has a Free license. - Josh Triplett
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