Scripsit Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Sun, 2002-09-22 at 08:56, martin f krafft wrote: > > [please CC me on replies] (But Jeff didn't. I'll add Martin to my Cc: list)
> > "Those whose work is in agreement with [1] may freely use, modify, > > or distribute this under the same terms. Those who don't may > > not." > > 1. http://www.debian.org/social_contract/ > Fails DFSG 6. Mostly though sloppy writing, I think. If the intention was something like: 1. I grant everyone the permission, free of charge, to use, copy and/or distribute this work in either original or modified form. 2. However, the rights granted in clause 1 do not extend to a work derived from this one if that derived work is subject to valid copyright claims whose licensing terms, when taken as a whole, does not meet the DFSG. it is not self-evidenly non-free. It's still weird and somehow self-referential, though. In particular, DFSG #3 _in fine_ means that The licence is DFSG-free if and only if it is DFSG-free. We can work our way out of the logical uncertainity by adding a third clause to bootstrap the freedom: 3. For the purposes of interpreting clause 2 above, this License itself is considered to meet the DFSG. The net result would be logically meaningful and actually seems to be somewhat useful. It is, in a sense, a "most permissive viral license" in that derived works can be relicensed with any other viral license, such as the (L)GPL (whose virality would be enough to enforce clause 2, so that the original license would not have to be appended), but cannot be changed to a non-viral license such as BSD-style or "public domain". It does allow derivations to be taken to closed-source gratisware. To avoid that, more precautions are needed, and one would end up redoing the GPL. -- Henning Makholm "What the hedgehog sang is not evidence."
