Re: srfi licensing

On 2004-01-29 14:25:43 +0000 Michael Sperber 
<sperber-jNDFPZUTrfQQDnmTUQnR1uqEdJ8o/[email protected]> wrote:

> Let me suggest that those you say don't have a copyright notice (and
> the reference implementations among them in general) are indeed
> covered by the SRFI copyright notice (definitely those that were
> inlined in a SRFI document).

I'll need to compare the code to be sure, with the obvious 
implications of that. I'll wait a little longer for comments first.

> The jury's on debian-legal is still out on whether the SRFI license
> indeed makes for free software.  Three lawyers we had look at the
> license say it is; most of those on debian-legal say it isn't.  These
> guys are really turning into a plague.  I'm losing patience with
> them.

Did the lawyers look for "this is crystal clear" or "I would be able 
to argue that in court"? Did you have lawyers from both case and code 
law regions? If someone posts their replies (with permission) to 
debian-legal, it would probably help inform the discussion.

Having been well-flamed for letting a couple of things slip past, 
debian-legal is understandably cautious. I think it's reasonable to be 
unhappy with an ambiguous licence. This one appears to limit 
modifications to developing new SRFI documents and translating out of 
English if you take the combination of the parts. It grants some broad 
rights, but then limits them.

Is there really any reason for the limit on allowed purposes for 
modification? The aim of given in the FAQ is better achieved through 
other means that I mentioned. If this is off-topic here, please help 
me to move it somewhere better.

> (I'm suprised they think 13 and 14 are OK---they weren't OK with
> scsh.)

Who do you mean by "they"? This preliminary analysis is my work, 
considering only the schematics files so far, not anyone else's work 
or on any other files. The copies of 13 and 14 both came from GNU/MIT 
Scheme (13 via scsh), so I assumed they were clean. Do you know a 
problem with them?

-- 
MJR/slef     My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read
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