"MJ Ray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kevin B. McCarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I would be interested to hear your opinions on the Geant4 Software
License, version 1.0 [1]. [...]
[1] http://geant4.web.cern.ch/geant4/license/LICENSE.html
I think it is clearly GPL-incompatible (as you noted) for reasons
similar to the old BSD licence and it might not follow the DFSG because
of clauses 4 (automatic donation to upstream), clause 8 (no right to
dispute unauthorised inclusion of your code) and maybe 5 (discrimination
against fields of use) below.
How exactly does automatic upstream licence violate the DFSG?
I think I see your point with number 8, but the idea of that clause
fits the spirit of Software freeness. the idea is to prevent a big company
from
suing the developers without any good reason in an attempt to extort money
from
the developers. That sort of clause does discorage that. It is also a purely
defensive clause.
Can you suggest a better wording?
I don't think 5 is really a DFSG freeness problem, as attempting to patent
a derivitive work is questionable. With all likelyhood such a patent
would be invalidated in a court battle, so the clause only serves to prevent
the whole thing from happening. I see no feilds of endevor which require
software patents.
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