On Tue, 29 May 2001, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 07:36:20PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > The license has always been that way, so that others don't issue dodgy
> > (ie insecure or otherwise dangerous) versions of it.
>
>
> Thats not true, Notice the changes boldfaced on securityportal. The license
> has changed and it was never obvious before that (modified) redistribution
> was forbidden.
The license hasn't changed, just its wording. Just because it wasn't
obvious doesn't mean it was allowed. Generally, you're given the rights a
license dictates, not unallowed ones it removes, so redistribution of the
original work was, and still is allowed for "normal" releases, and was
specificly disallowed for a particular beta release. That's not totally
obvious from any of the written acticles, even after updates. Just like
DJB with Qmail, Darren wants to control distribution, and either people
will allow that, or they'll use another application to do the same thing.
> anyway, with darrens latest additions to the license it is not OSS free
> anymore.
According to its author, it never was OSS free.
That point is now obvious. Most licenses have a default deny policy,
modification was never had a permit line. It still doesn't have a permit
line, so the access list hasn't changed, it's just easier for those who
can't see the default deny at the bottom to figure it out.
It's his code, and his license, I'm not sure why everyone sems to want to
take them both away from him.
Very little of what's been written about the issue has even been
researched, let alone seemingly passed by Darren.
Specificly in the securityportal article:
* To me, the sentence "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms
* are permitted" clearly allows for modification of the source code...
Doesn't seem to have a good basis for legal standing. It's not *clear* to
me that the specific license phrase equates modification with usage, and I
highly doubt that any lawyer would think that way, let alone a judge. It
certainly could be argued that it's ambiguous, but I don't think it can be
argued that it's clear. The usual NetBSD license explicitly talks about
modification, and I think that anyone who thinks modificiation is implied
is on pretty shakey ground. Certainly anyone who thinks they can go back
a release and then fork had better seek the advice of their legal counsel
before they do so.
People are free to use or not use IPFilter as-is, seek a specific license
from the author for changes, or play with other software. The OpenBSD and
Wasabi crowds seem to be the only ones who are likely to get immediate
licensing changes rejected without consideration.
What's not clear to me is if fixing a bug isn't disallowed by the current
license, and that's more worrysome to me than if it's an official Open
Source application. A seperate section allowing local-only modification
would make this a much better license from my perspective.
Paul
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Paul D. Robertson "My statements in this message are personal opinions
[EMAIL PROTECTED] which may have no basis whatsoever in fact."
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