A devious little hack...

... or how to make them obey me while still keeping Ion DFSG-"free" /
satisfy the "Open Source" definition.

It seems that ideologist distros aren't going for the rather reasonable
28-day clause in the present license, so I've been considering simplifying
the license. It could simply forbid distributing non-renamed versions.
But it could also be just:

> You may use, modify, and redistribute this software under the LGPL,
> version 2.1, reproduced below, extended with the following terms:
>
>  * Unless explicitly permitted by the copyright holder, redistribution
>    of modified versions is only allowed if they are and any executables
>    and library files installed by them, are renamed to not be associated
>    with the Ion(tm) project, and neither the copyright holder nor the
>    Ion(tm) project are pointed to for support.
>
>  (Plus some standard stuff about how these conditions may not be
>  altered, how I retain the right to use your modifications, etc.)

This kind of terms are permitted under these definitions [1,2]
(or at least requiring name change, which _should_ by any reasonable
interpretation include renaming executables with non-generic names,
etc.)

Now, behold, GPLv3! From my reading of it [3], it actually allows
adding this kind of terms while remaining compatible with other GPLv3
(and "GPLv2 or later") works; cf. Section 7. The 28-day clause 
unfortunately does not seem to fit under the terms therein.


But such a simple extra term alone doesn't really do much with regard
to bastard distributors carrying ancient versions. Now comes the hack:
you'd have to patch/modify the source code to actually build something
worth using. It shouldn't be much extra effort for users building from
orignal source: just a simple './modify' script. And yet you couldn't 
distribute the result under the name Ion anymore -- unless explicitly
permitted by me, outside the license, in which case I'd just show them
the terms of the present license. MUAHHAHAHAHAHHAAA }:-> 


Not sure I'll go for this, but it's a devious little "use their own
rules agains them" hack I came up with, which would simplify the license
considerably. It should also work better for Ion3plus from which I
have no intention of making releases, or responding to support requests
of random lusers who probably couldn't install it from the repository
anyway.


  [1]: http://www.debian.org/social_contract
  
  [2]: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

  [3]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

-- 
Tuomo