On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:09:14AM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > That "as long as" is important. It can be engaged in two ways. If I > say "GPL except for to Bob, who gets Nothing! Nothing!" then that's > not Free, because Bob doesn't have a Free license. If I say "BSD to > teachers, GPL to everybody, and that pair must be passed along" then > that's not Free. The QPL says "BSD to inria/cristal, copyleft/patch > to everyone else, and that pair must be passed along" -- that "must", > that added restriction, is the non-free part.
I'm not sure about this. As stated, that "must" is inherent in copyright law -- if we start saying that "free software" requires that non-copyright holders be allowed to change license terms, I think we've missed the boat. Can you express this point focussing on issues of real, practical non-freeness? [for example, stuff which interferes with porting, bug fixes, security fixes, ...] What you're essentially saying, from my point of view, is that where we have two licenses, both of which are free, one discriminates against users and the other does not. But if that were the case, one of them wouldn't be free. [Note: I will agree that the QPL isn't GPL compatible without an explicit exception. And that can be an issue which makes QPL licensed code non-distributable (and thus non-free) in some circumstances.] Thanks, -- Raul
