On 5/19/05, Roberto C. Sanchez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://web.archive.org/web/20041130014304/http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > http://web.archive.org/web/20041105024302/http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
Thanks, Roberto. The (moderately) explicit bit I had in mind is in fact still in the current FAQ, I just missed it: ( http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCIfInterpreterIsGPL ) ... The interpreted program, to the interpreter, is just data; a free software license like the GPL, based on copyright law, cannot limit what data you use the interpreter on. But you are quite right to provide the "philosophy" link, since that's the one that (IMHO, IANAL) goes way over the top: <quote> Most free software licenses are based on copyright, and there are limits on what kinds of requirements can be imposed through copyright. If a copyright-based license respects freedom in the ways described above, it is unlikely to have some other sort of problem that we never anticipated (though this does happen occasionally). However, some free software licenses are based on contracts, and contracts can impose a much larger range of possible restrictions. That means there are many possible ways such a license could be unacceptably restrictive and non-free. We can't possibly list all the possible contract restrictions that would be unacceptable. If a contract-based license restricts the user in an unusual way that copyright-based licenses cannot, and which isn't mentioned here as legitimate, we will have to think about it, and we will probably decide it is non-free. </quote> This text is still present in http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html . Cheers, - Michael
