On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 04:52:55PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > >software, and I think it's the burden of people who actually care > >about > >the software to do the legwork to ensure that it's free. > > Sure, but I can't see why they shouldn't assert their (non-exclusive) > copyright interest in derived works.
No reason. But that isn't necessarily what the clause in question says. It is ambiguous; it could be interpreted in one of several ways. One of which is OK, and another which is very not-OK. We've had cases previously where a licensor has interpreted a licence in common use as a DFSG-free licence in a non-free manner; can you give any solid reason why that could not be an issue in this case? We have a licence which (AFAIK) we've never seen before, with an ambiguous clause, and some of us would like to take the diligent path and disambiguate it. Why do you have such a problem with that? And for the record, although I have no interest in or knowledge of this package, I would be willing to contact upstream about this matter if the maintainer and other better-qualified parties are unable or unwilling to do so. - Matt