discuss: Licenses [was Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
Subject:
Re: Licenses [was Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
From:
Mysid ####@####.####
Date:
16 Jul 2004 10:33:57 -0000
Message-Id: <6eb799ab0407160333725fc530@mail.gmail.com>
> > > to be restrictive to those who would like to abuse it. A free
> > > license must restrict the license under which any modified work is
> > > issued. Otherwise one could modify the work and issue a very
> > > non-free license for the modified work.
> > Under this criteria BSD license would not be a free license. I dont
> > think thats correct. What you are defining is a copyleft license
> > according to FSF
The BSD license is a free software license... being "free" has nothing
to do with freedom from "abuse"; That would be called "freedom from
abuse", and it's an issue separate from the the work being free or
non-free.
Additional protections to keep Software/Docs free are and should
remain IMO up to the discretion of the authors: although some people
might not be willing to contribute improvements to materials that lack
the strong protection of a copyleft license, the other way around, and
there's a huge endless GPL vs BSD debate out there to boot.
People shouldn't consider it lightly, and Copyleft / Share-a-Like
protections are a good idea,
But the important thing is that "Being Free" and having "Copyleft"
style restrictions are not the same issue at all. Heck, in a real
sense being Copyleft actually makes the software less free for the
person who downloaded it from you to change it: they have much less
flexibility in terms of adding licensing restrictions to their own
deriviative work.
There's no guarantee without Share-a-Like type protections that future
versions of a "Free" item will remain free, but that doesn't exist
anyhow :: the authors could choose to make a change of license for
future versions of the product to a restrictive license later
anyhow... ...If some user being able to create a non-free
deriviative makes it non-free: then it seems to follow that everything
is non-free....
> The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow
> them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the
> original software.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Thus the license of an DFSG work must allow (but not require) that any
> derived work be distributed under the same terms. Thus derived works
Must allow, but don't have to require. A Free license means the work is
free. It doesn't have to guarantee that any deriviative is also, but it can.
> may be distributed under any restrictive terms whatsoever (depending on
> the license of course). Bad!
No, sometimes, sometimes... it can be good; there is a tradeoff involved.
Surely.... ... it worked for BSD... it worked well for Wine for a long time,
until the bunch of commercial enhancements like oh, Crossover Office
and WineX started popping up (EG)
-Mysid
