Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I don't think that the requirement "you may not charge for distributing > a modified version of the program unless the source code [...] is publicly > and freely available" violates the DFSG. It's not much different from > the GPL's requirements that the source code to modified versions of > GPL'd software be made available, and is in fact much less onerous in > its requirements than is, eg, section 3b. of the GPL. I think this list has > seen discussions about whether that violates the DFSG, and I hope we can > avoid rehashing that.
Such rules *are* importantly different from the GPL's rules, because the GPL lets you charge whatever you want for copying the program, not merely a "reasonable cost". The DFSG agrees with the GPL, of course, in requiring that there may not be such restrictions on how much you can legally charge for a copy. > Moving on to the other objection, does "you may not charge for the > program itself, only for reasonable costs of distributing the program" > violate the DFSG? The DFSG requires that a program's license not prevent > sale of an aggregate of software that includes that program. It doesn't > require that the program be salable alone, just in combination with > other software. That requirement imposes a maximum price that can be charged for a copy of the program. Whether it blocks Debian or not isn't the point; if I make a CD with only analog, and charge $20,000 for it, then I'm violating the license, and that makes analog a non-DFSG-free program. > And get away with it. :-) It's woth noting that there is a lot of > software in debian licensed under the Artistic license, which has this > to say about sale costs, and nobody has seriously objected to this so far: The FSF, in fact, did object to the Artistic license, precisely because it's vague. But the analog license is *not* vague, because it doesn't have the "you don't have to justify it to the copyright holder" escape clause. Something licensed like analog would have a real limit on how much you can charge, and that limit makes it non-DFSG-free. > Finally, even if I'm dead wrong on the above, the title of this email is > wrong. Stephen has modified his license in the past to address concerns, > expresses a great deal of willing flexablity in the license itself ("If > you want to do something that is against this licence, but within the > spirit of free software, then let's talk about it."), and is, I think, a > Debian user. I'm suspect comething can be worked out to keep analog in > Debian if that turns out to be necessary. If this is correct, then we should certainly ask Stephen to modify the license. Perhaps we the requirement could be changed to a request: "you are requested not to charge more than a reasonable copying fee". That's no problem at all. > Also, Stephen, have you even thought about dual-licensing analog under some > other, probably generally more restrictive, license like the GPL? That might > be useful, since it would firmly put to rest any complaints about the free > softwareness of analog's license, while (probably) not giving away any more > rights than you do now, and without changing at all the more interesting > provisions of your current license (like the "1000 lines" clauses). Dual-licensing would completely solve the problem. Thomas