Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 09:51:51PM -0400, Walter Landry wrote: > > I would say that the DFSG uses imprecise language. DFSG #10 enforces > > a particular interpretation of the language. That is, DFSG #1 does > > not really mean _no_ fee, just not certain types of fees. > > I think the DFSG#1's "may not restrict ..." is a superset of "fees"; it's > what I'd point to, if asked to explain why the DFSG says "you may only > redistribute on Monday" is non-free; I don't think there's any sane > interpretation of "fee" that includes that requirement, but it's clearly > a restriction. I believe DFSG#1 really does mean "no restrictions are > allowed", where "fee" is an example.
It don't think it affects my analysis whether a fee is an example of a restriction, or just an additional thing that licenses can't do, > So, more generally (in your terms), I think DFSG#1 does not really mean > _no_ restrictions are allowed, just not certain types of restrictions. > I think this is very much the interpretation that has been used in > practice, and I believe it's the only sane one: we clearly believe many > restrictions on distribution are non-free (not all of which are "fees" > at all), but we also clearly do allow certain restrictions. > > I think this does permit the GPL, provided that the project believes that > the GPL's restrictions are reasonable. The DFSG does not give much in > the way of guidelines to determine what restrictions are reasonable and > which are not, but that's precisely why we have long and detailed debates > about choice of law, forced distribution, invariant sections, and so on. > I think this is the correct behavior--these decisions which took hundreds > of posts to come to any consensus on couldn't have been correctly decided > by a couple magic guidelines. I believe all of this is a feature of the > DFSG, not a bug. (Doing freedom right takes work.) > > Alternative interpretations of DFSG#1 seem to be: 1, that no restrictions > are allowed--clearly useless, rejecting most licenses; 2, that *only* fees > (for some definition of "fee") is disallowed; which I believe neither > follows from the text nor is a good guideline for freedom, being far too > narrow (for example, ignoring the "only on Monday" example). At least > for DFSG#1 wrt. the GPL, there's no need to be interpreting DFSG#10 as a > grandfather clause. If I understand correctly, you argue that DFSG #1-#9 should be interpreted in such a way to make the GPL free (because of, among other things, flamewars on -legal). That makes DFSG #10 a no-op. I argue that DFSG #10 enforces a particular interpretation. DFSG #10 is thus a consistency check. For those with the proper mindset, DFSG #10 is thus a no-op. I'm not sure that we're disagreeing about anything important. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]