On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 11:07:43AM -0500, Paul Jarc wrote:
> Adam McKenna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 08:18:29PM +1300, Chris K. Young wrote:
> > > I say that dist.html should be considered authoritative. There are
> > > references in the qmail and djbdns documentation that contain the
> > > URL to their respective pages.
> >
> > That's what you say. But there isn't a definitive license (i.e. LICENSE or
> > COPYING) in the qmail distribution that explains those rights
>
> There's nothing magical about those names. The names "dist.html" and
> "softwarelaw.html" are just as good, and I don't see why they should
> have to be included in the distribution.
>
> > some web page could be altered or taken down at any time, leaving
> > users without any rights whatsoever.
>
> IANAL (are you?), but I doubt that a copyright holder can revoke
> permission already granted in this way. The *record* (or rather,
> *one* record) of permission could be removed, but how does that affect
> the permission itself?
No, I'm not a lawyer, but to defend a copyright infringement claim in court
you would need some sort of proof that you had been given that permission,
and if a web page that can be taken down or modified at any time is the only
source, I can see how that would be unsettling to advocates of Free Software.
If a license had been included in the source tarball, then everyone who had
downloaded that tarball would also have a copy of the license, making it much
easier to prove the terms under which the software was released.
I'm not saying Dan would ever sue anyone for infringement, but then again I'm
not the person deciding whether or not something should go in main or
non-free (and if I was, I'd probably still put it in non-free, even though I
believe it loosely conforms.)
It's also worth mentioning that while softwarelaw.html describes Dan's
feelings about software/copyright law, it may or may not describe actual
software/copyright law (case law or otherwise). As far as I know, Dan is not
a lawyer either.
--Adam
--
Adam McKenna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | "No matter how much it changes,
http://flounder.net/publickey.html | technology's just a bunch of wires
GPG: 17A4 11F7 5E7E C2E7 08AA | connected to a bunch of other wires."
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