On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 09:48:33AM +0100, Gerard Patel wrote: > have you looked at the license for DansGuardian - a component of > MNF ? It's Gpl all right (it has been approved by the pope :-)), but it's > certainly not your run-of-the-mill Gpl. > Basically you get one free download; if you want to download it more > than one time, to get fixes for example (including security fixes) from > the official site or the 'approved' mirrors, and if you use it for > _commercial_ usage, you have to pay. > > Btw, Mandrake's name is in the license explanation as an exemple of > a customer who has to pay <g> > > So it seems that Mandrake is not alone in thinking that security > products deserve specially crafted licenses.
Just in case anyone is wondering about this, details are here: http://dansguardian.org/?page=copyright2 Frankly, I think this guy is smoking crack. What he's saying is that you can't download it from his site for commercial use unless you pay him a fee. If I download it from another site then I can use it for commercial purposes as much as I like. After a discussion with RMS apparently he updated the site to make this more clear. Frankly, I think this is an end run around the GPL. He wants to get the benefit of saying he's doing open source software, while at the same time trying to get paid in the same manner as a proprietary vendor. At best his text is terribly confusing. So yeah it is GPL but it is not. I feel that the authors intent certainly violates the FSF principle freedoms as defined here: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html In particular the principle of freedom for any use. And I feel he violates the Open Source principles of non-discrimination which is part of the Open Source definition as found here: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php It appears that the FSF has already tried to educate him, and the page was changed to make it a download fee, but I still think it's confusing and downright dirty pool. You can read the thread that got him to make some changes here: http://www.be.linux.org/pipermail/asbl-libre/2001-October/000024.html At any rate I feel Mandrake should immediately remove this product from MNF. I don't see how this is any different from the pine issue. And at the very end of that page you'll see that the author still tries to imply that a commercial user downloading from someplace else is using an "illegal download." If Mandrake doesn't do that, perhaps those of us who are mirror Mandrake should consider removing the MNF ISOs until they do. -- Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://ben.reser.org "If you're not making any mistakes, you're flat out not trying hard enough." - Jim Nichols
