On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 03:03:36PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > But a requirement that I provide permissions over-and-above the > > freedoms I had is non-free. > > Do you believe that this is non-free because of philosophical reasons, > or because DFSG 3 says so? I recognise that this is what DFSG 3 appears > to claim, but on re-reading the debian-private thread which shaped the > social contract I'm becoming increasingly convinced that that's not its > intention. I'd be interested to hear arguments for why DFSG 3 /should/ > mean what it appears to mean.
Well, I certainly find the QPL's "you must patch, and you must let me incorporate your patches; I can apply *your* patches to *my* software but you can't" extremely offensive; denying me permissions, and requiring that I grant those same permissions (which I am denied myself) back to the initial author for my work. (If he won't grant them to me for his work, how can he possibly demand I grant them to him for my work and then claim the license is free?) I think this should be considered non-free; I think this interpretation of DFSG#3 agrees. I don't presently have any handy one-liners like "freedom to private modifications" to summarize my disgust at this term, though. (To be clear, patch clauses are explicitly free, for obvious reasons--though as I've said I'd like that to change. I think "you must patch, *and* you must permit me to incorporate your patches" goes beyond the DFSG exception.) -- Glenn Maynard
