[Savannah-register-public] Re: [gnu.org #354920] ISC/OpenBSD License

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 02:59:02PM -0500, Brett Smith via RT wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 08:49 -0500, Sylvain Beucler via RT wrote:
> > Can you tell me if the license, when it uses "and" instead of
> > "and/or":
> > - is free software
> > - is compatible with the GNU GPL?
> 
> The answer to both questions is generally yes.
> 
> The reason we ask for clarification when this comes up is because this
> is the wording that caused so much trouble around Pine.  I don't know
> how familiar you are with this situation, but to put it briefly, the
> developers of Pine argued that when the license said you could
> "distribute and modify" the software, that did *not* mean that you could
> distribute modified versions.  Of course, their interpretation
> contravened the intent of a long history of similar licenses, but we
> didn't want to escalate the situation at the time.
> 
> We currently have a policy that we will treat such licenses as free
> until the licensor gives us a reason not to -- and if that time comes,
> it's quite possible that we'd be willing to escalate the situation now,
> at least if the software was worth fighting for.
> 
> If you could explain the history and see if that might help convince
> them to change, I would appreciate it.  But if they don't, you can still
> accept this software.

I did so and tried to explain him about the issue.
Now let's wait for his answer.


Tassilo Philipp <tphilipp>:

Sorry, I won't "clarify" the license part, because it says "modeled
after the ISC license" and not "this is the ISC license".


Sylvain Beucler <Beuc>:

Hi,

Can you tell us why that would be a problem?

After more research, the reason we ask is that the Pine program was
distributed under a license which had this kind of wording, and their
authors weirdly argued that this allowed to privately modify and
distribute verbatim, but did not allow to distribute modified
versions.
- Their position:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/faq/legal.html
- A Debian developer commenting on the issue:
http://people.debian.org/~terpstra/message/20021112.091356.2048f162.en.html
This made the software non-free.

That why we'd appreciate you change "and" in "and/or" - not in order
to mimic the ISC, but instead to avoid this possible license
misinterpretation.

Regards.

https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?7734

-- 
Sylvain