On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 4:13 PM tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote:
> Hallo Herr userbeit...@abwesend.de, > > am Freitag, 27. März 2020 um 21:07 schrieben Sie: > > > I just read through > > http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Packages. In Section > > Utilities 4DOS is marked as "no not include" for FreeDOS 1.3. > > > ?!?!?! I thought that 4DOS was specifically free to use with FreeDOS. > > Wasn't this the ONLY limitation of the license? Shouldn't it therefore > > be completely free in a FreeDOS distribution, for private and commerical > > use? Actually, this is the only way it was meant to be, wasn't it? > > > https://www.4dos.info/sources.htm > > "The Software, or any portion of it, may not be compiled for use on any > > operating system OTHER than FreeDOS…" > > unfortunately this is not compatible with GPL(any version). and was > initiated > this way by our leadership. > > and as our leadership is trying to convert FreeDOS to be GPLDOS this > makes 4DOS licensing incompatible with GPLDOS. > > too bad, but that's life. > > learn to live with it. > > Tom > > Yes, as I said in my other email, the 4DOS license was a mistake and I should not have suggested that extra term to Rex. This is unfortunate. I am not trying to turn FreeDOS into a "GPLDOS" though. I think that's mis-stating the issue. I have always said that FreeDOS should be free (open source). There's no point in having a "FreeDOS" if it cannot be used by everyone. In the past, we've included some software that was free ("freeware" or "no cost") but not free (open source). And a few distros ago, I decided future FreeDOS distributions should not include things that weren't "open source." We discussed that on the email lists at the time; this was not hidden. I've been moving FreeDOS to be as "open source" as we can make it. For FreeDOS 1.2, we didn't include very many packages that weren't "open source." For FreeDOS 1.3, I wanted to be more careful to include only things that were "open source." And I had to draw a line to what was "open source" and what was not, so I decided that anything that was OSI-approved or FSF-approved would be fair to include in FreeDOS 1.3. The Releases/1.3/Licenses <http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Licenses> page in the FreeDOS Wiki is a copy/paste of what OSI and FSF think are acceptable to them. But the problem is that OSI and FSF (GNU) came long after MS-DOS. There were a lot of programs written for DOS (and released with source code) that didn't use the GNU GPL, or MIT, or BSD, or another OSI-approved or FSF-approved license. So we've always known we need to make exceptions for some programs that use other licenses. For FreeDOS 1.3, I captured that on the wiki so everyone could see it. On the Releases/1.3 <http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3> page, I wrote: *Note that some licenses are very old and pre-date the popularity of the > GNU GPL (v1 in 1989, v2 in 1991) or the Open Source Initiative (1998). > Other programs use their own licenses or other licenses not evaluated by > GNU or OSI. These licenses will need to be evaluated by FreeDOS. Goal will > be to include programs with licenses that are suitably "free" and "open > source."* ..and on the Releases/1.3/Licenses <http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Licenses> page, I wrote: *Other programs use their own licenses or other licenses not recognized or > evaluated by GNU or OSI. These licenses will need to be evaluated. Goal > will be to include programs with licenses that are suitably "free" and > "open source."* (Those are basically the same statement.) For programs that had a different license that wasn't on the OSI or FSF list, I evaluated them and made a decision. I was transparent and tracked the decisions on each package for FreeDOS 1.3 on the Releases/1.3/Packages <http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Packages> page. Not very many programs have been excluded from FreeDOS 1.3. For reference, this is the list of "do not include" decisions: *LHA* License is unclear, but appears incompatible with free software or open source. For example, license.txt includes additional terms on commercial use. "7b. If the recipient of commercial use deems inappropriate as a program user, you must not distribute." *see note for p7zip, which can unpack LZH files (LHa used .LZH and .LHA as file extensions) so if we have p7zip, we don't need to rely on a separate lha. *UNRAR* Unrar's license says you can view the source code and share it, so that's good. But it also says you cannot study the source code to reproduce the RAR compression algorithm. That's bad, definitely not open source. *see note for p7zip, which can unpack RAR files - so if we have p7zip, we don't need to rely on a separate unrar. *TPPATCH* (patching tool for RUNTIME 200 bug in programs compiled with Turbo Pascal) no source code, no license text *Kiloblaster* (game) We decided we can swap out games since they are not "core" like other programs are. Would be better to to replace this game with something GNU GPL or other recognized free/open license. *Linley's Dungeon Crawl *(game) We decided we can swap out games since they are not "core" like other programs are. Would be better to to replace this game with something GNU GPL or other recognized free/open license. *PSR Invaders *(game) We decided we can swap out games since they are not "core" like other programs are. Would be better to to replace this game with something GNU GPL or other recognized free/open license. *TAIL* (Unix-like) Remove M.Aitchison's TAIL (we have issues with license). Harald Arnesen's port of GNU Tail seems to have incorrect source file; have removed from ibiblio until it can be fixed. For now, do not include. *UPTIME* (Unix-like) UPTIME.DOC says "Free & Open DOS Utility" but later has conditions that appear to be incompatible with free software or open source software, including "3. You must obtain the permission of the author(s) before distributing this software or derived works (including combining it with commercial systems) commercially or depart in any way from the above conditions." Since we have a duplicate with Chamorro's uptimec, which uses a different license, let's omit this one. *4DOS* uses modified license that does not qualify as open source by Open Source Initiative or Free Software Foundation standards. The license does not permit use on non-DOS systems. *Powerpaint* (PAINT2) License is unclear. The source code has a copyright notice but does not have a statement that says "you can use this" or similar. Further, contains the SVGA256.BGI driver. But more importantly, It contains many OBJ files without source and several Borland Copyright example files. Too unclear, not something we should distribute. *Joe's Start* Did not find license. Source code says "Copyright (c) Joe Cosentino 2000. All Rights Reserved." Without license, this is not enough to indicate that the software can be included.
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