On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:44:50 -0800 Jeff Carr wrote: > On 01/09/07 16:34, Francesco Poli wrote: > > > Drafting and actively promoting licenses that forbid commercial use > > and/or modifications harms the free software movement, rather than > > helping it. > > That hasn't always worked out to be the case in my experience. Books > and documentation are a common one where that isn't always the case. > Small independent publishers and authors have used those clauses to > protect themselves from the really giant publishing houses.
You seem to be happy with free programs whose documentation is non-free. I am instead really really sad to see how many people seem to fail to understand the importance of freeness when talking about non-programs (documentation, music, visual art, literature, ...). I believe that freeness is important for non-programs for the very same reasons why it's important for programs. > > > Here (on debian-legal) we are interested in licenses that grant the > > important freedoms in a legally sound way. The important freedoms > > are the ones that follow from the spirit of the DFSG. > > Off hand, I wonder if it would be helpful to have a debian-dfsg list. > It might make it easier to separate the arguments more clearly and > also lower the noise for the bona fide lawyers around here who are > willing to donate their time to give us free legal guidance. :) [...] I don't think it would make sense to separate legal issues from freeness ones. Why? Because they are often intertwined together: you cannot be sure the important freedoms are granted, if you don't take the legal context into account. -- http://frx.netsons.org/progs/scripts/releas-o-meter.html Try our amazing Releas-o-meter! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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