On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 02:49:24AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 05:05:26PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > HTTP and FTP sound pretty equivalent to me. I don't think you'd have any > > problems finding an expert witness to testify to that. HTTP and rsync > > might not be, though. I'm not sure a court would have much difficulty in > > allowing "equivalent" to allow for "well, the source archive is /more/ > > capable, we figured that woudl be fine", though.
> What about binaries via BitTorrent, source via HTTP? BT would be more > capable than HTTP for many projects' binaries, and HTTP more capable for > source, where a lot of people download binaries and few download source. > They're clearly not equivalent, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable > distribution scheme. The interpretation of "equivalent" here is up to the courts to settle; which I think is how it should be. While "equivalent" doesn't mean "identical", you can always resort to *using* identical methods if in doubt. Just to be clear, do you believe there's a freeness issue here, or are you merely suggesting ways the license could be improved? > > > > allow users to immediately obtain copies of its Complete Corresponding > > > > Source Code. > > > Such terms make code reuse with non-networked applications extremely > > > inconvenient, and prohibit reuse in embedded environments (eg. a device > > > with 32k of memory, no network facilities, and limited or no visual > > > output). > > > I'd find it disturbing for the FSF to even call such terms free; they're > > > going much further, and condoning it by making it GPL-compatible. > > > (This is, by a wide margin, my biggest objection.) > > OTOH, at its absolute worst, it doesn't make GPLv3 stuff that doesn't make > > use of that option non-free. > I think you're the third person to say something along those lines: "be > thankful, it could be a lot worse". It's still endorsing an extremely > onerous class of restriction, implying that it's acceptable, helpful, > and that the classes of application screwed over by it is unimportant. > It's discouraging that people are thankful that's "all it is" ... I'm thankful that it's not *built into* the license in such a way that everything released under GPLv3 will have this issue. The FSF had a hard job of balancing quite a few disparate interests; it's to be expected that the resulting license would allow people to use it in some ways that Debian considers non-free, the good news is if it can also still be applied in ways that *are* free. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/
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