On Tue, 2007-04-24 at 18:13 +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > The context of that statement is the GPL as a license, not as a > work. The license, applied to another work, is free. > > The GPL as a work, however, is *not* free, since the license on that > work does not grant the requisite freedoms. Surely there's no > disagreement on this?
It is irrelevant, because of several reasons that have already been pointed out in this discussion. Everyone has their favourite reason, and the most important in my own opinion is that the requirements of freedom in the SC and DFSG do not extend to the licenses of the licenses that works are licensed under. This follows necessarily from the legal composition of copyright, which readers are expected to be (at least vaguely) familiar with when considering these issues. There is no need to explain or define copyright in these documents. Or do you think that we should also explicitly state that the licenses of licenses of licenses are exempt from the requirements in the DFSG, although we encourage authors to make them DFSG-free, too? What about the licenses of those? Should we explicitly state in the DFSG that we consider copyright to be non-free, but we're going to make an exception for it? (I wonder what the rationale for that exception would be...) Should we state in a GR that we recommend that copyright be changed or abolished, because it's non-DFSG-free, but that we will put up with it in the meantime? There's of course no need for you to answer these questions. I just think they are quite amusing in their absurdity, and they have some important resemblance to the original GR request. I have also read the rest of your post, in which you restate your original statements. I acknowledge these as your opinion, but I have already given my comment on them. -- Fabian Fagerholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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