> > Zack had replied: > >>> I agree that the uncertainty here is enough, in practice, to keep users > >>> from actually exercising their rights of stripping further restrictions, > >>> as per *GPL-3 licenses.
I replied further: > > Indeed. IMO, the best solution here would be for the OSI to join > > other FOSS activists to take a stand in encouraging removal of > > further restrictions under the Affero GPL. The Neo4j situation was > > a huge missed opportunity in this regard. Florian Weimer then replied further: > It goes against more than two decades of DFSG (and presumably OSD) > analysis, where conflicting and unclear terms have always been held against > the licensor, making the work non-free. I disagree completely. GPLv3§7¶4 didn't *go against* DFSG/OSD on that point, rather it was *informed* by those two decades of that analysis. The whole point of the GPLv3§7¶4 provision in the GPLv3-group of licenses *is* to give a better solution than “must reject” to those doing that analysis. Of course, we can argue, as we are on this thread, whether the GPLv3§7¶4 approach to this issue was the right one. We can also argue whether, after ten years of use, it has been effective. But, then, we should then discuss why it hasn't been effective. IMO, this issue is just a subset of the larger problem: widespread industry ignoring GPL's terms — which continues for almost impunity, and a change by some major organizations who historically were at least friendly to copyleft are now not particularly friendly to copyleft. But, please, let's be clear that GPLv3§7¶4 is just yet another copyleft clause that happens to be regularly ignored/manipulated. This issue just *isn't* about license evaluation for freedom/openness; it's about whether copyleft terms are adhered to and respected. It's almost always the case that when copyleft terms are violated/ignored, by side-effect, the software becomes non-free/non-open. But that doesn't make the underlying license itself a non-free/non-open one. -- bkuhn _______________________________________________ The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address. License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
