Re: re: licensing question

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.version-control.arch.user
Organization The XEmacs Project
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Suffield <[email protected]> writes:

    Andrew> Well, this isn't strictly a restriction on redistribution,
    Andrew> it's a one-off hoop-jumping requirement. The distinction
    Andrew> lies between these two licenses:

A one-off restriction is still a restriction if you've only got one
copy.  That copy is *not* free, and control of individual copies is
the fundamental mechanism of copyright.

I'm really surprised that that kind of sophistry persuaded anybody who
matters at Debian.  Even if it persuades a court, I don't see why
Debian should shy away from labelling such restrictions "non-free".

    Andrew> If there's one thing I learned from debian-legal, it's
    Andrew> that most people do not understand licensing, a
    Andrew> significant number of upstream authors do not care about
    Andrew> it, and the vast majority of licensing issues arise from
    Andrew> simple ignorance.

Sure, but none of those are the case here.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.
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