>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Brian> Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> I would agree entirely with that assessment. I personally only >> have a problem with the forced distribution clause, and not the >> all-permissive license to the original developer. I think the >> requirement for an all-permissive license is obnoxious, but >> still Free. Brian> If it were only an all-permissive license contingent on Brian> distribution *to that person*, that would be fine. The Brian> compulsive license even if that person doesn't have a copy Brian> is not Free. Brian> For example, let's say I give some software under the QPL Brian> to Alice. I also give it under the GPL to Bob. Alice Brian> doesn't propagate hers, and tells me this. Bob does Brian> propagate his. It gets back to the initial developer, Brian> INRIA. Now INRIA has my code, with a permissive license I Brian> didn't want to give them! I'm not sure there's anything wrong with this. I'm certainly having a hard time finding a basis in the DFSG to justify this being non-free. I'm also having a hard time convincing myself that we desire this outcome to be non-free from some moral standpoint. Intuitively I believe that granting additional permissions in a license should not make an otherwise free license non-free. Given the GPL we seem to have accepted the premise that a license may require all modifications to be distributed under the same license as the original work itself. The combined effect of these two statements seems to be that you can create a license that grants extra permissions to some class of people, even for all modifications that are distributed. (I don't think the QPL is such a license, but the reason it is not such a license seems relatively easy to overcome. It's still non-free for other reasons.) Perhaps we should give up the intuition that additional rights granted should not make a license less free. If I'm going to support doing that, I'd like to know why these outcomes are bad. So far all I know is that there are outcomes that seem fine to me that you consider unacceptable. Note that even if we end up disagreeing on this issue, I'm still interested in helping draft GRs to address conclusions of the QPL discussion. I think some of these issues are fairly important to actually bring to the project; they keep coming up again in multiple contexts and I'd like to know how the project as a whole feels because it would make evaluating licenses easier. However, I think we have a bit of work understanding the arguments on both sides of the issue before we could have an informed vote.