Re: [Gnu-arch-users] re: licensing question

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Suffield <address@hidden> writes:

    Andrew> As to the question of whether or not it's a GPL violation
    Andrew> - it was our considered opinion that this is unclear.

Interesting.  The GPL says quite clearly:

      1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
    source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
    conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
    copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
    notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
    and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
    along with the Program.

and

      6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
    Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
    original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
    these terms and conditions.  You may not impose any further
    restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted
    herein.

I don't see how Red Hat's conditions on redistribution can be
compatible with that: http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html,
Appendix 1 Section 2 clearly tries to impose restrictions (at least
diligence in finding and removing RH IP) on verbatim redistributions.

    Andrew> We thought that it was most likely a DFSG violation, but
    Andrew> the efforts of the anti-freedom trolls inhibited our
    Andrew> attempts to get anything done about this.

*sigh* It's anti-freedom trolls like that that ruin the reputation of
all the honest anti-freedom trolls.  I see no reason why a company
that wants to use the "social trademark" of "free software" shouldn't
be subject to strong criticism, and where the licenses so provide,
legal action, if it tries to prohibit verbatim redistribution.  (If
they collected all trademarked data in a single directory, and
provided fallbacks to non-trademarked equivalents if that directory
weren't found, I'd give them a gold star for trying; I don't see how
you could do much better than that and still use your trademarks.)

    Andrew>  It's difficult to get upstream authors to fix these
    Andrew> problems when you have other people running around
    Andrew> claiming that debian-legal is wrong and has no authority
    Andrew> to say anything.

[...]
    Andrew> And we thought that was an acceptable model for people to
    Andrew> use. A number of other projects have done similar things
    Andrew> following debian-legal's advice.

I think you overestimate the power of unity here, and the "other
projects" show it.  Honest redistributors will give weight to the
(deservedly!) well-reputed opinion of debian-legal.  Others will hide
behind any legal excuse to keep doing what they're doing, including
(but not limited to) trash-talking debian-legal and claiming that the
GPL's intent doesn't matter, only what's explicitly forbidden by the
language, which is effectively nothing until a court rules, etc.

I certainly hope debian-legal will continue its excellent work.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.