On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 02:42:42PM -0500, Stephen C. North wrote: > > A user needs to > > be able to modify the software, period, without having to take any other > > action to enable them to perform that action legally. > > > > Is this Elie's opinion or is it clearly stated in the Debian Free Software > Guidelines?
This is at least the spirit of the guidelines; I am not a license nit-picker, and I leave the license arguments in general to those who have more time on their hands. > Either way, the AT&T source code agreement section 4.2 states that a > licensee is only > obliged to make the patches available to AT&T when they are distributed > externally. It is my understanding that other people need to be able to freely redistribute their own hacked versions as well, or it goes into the non-free section. > (I think the lawyers left a hole here regarding distribution of binaries > compiled from > modified source, if you'd like me to bring this to their attention :-) This is not an out for debian. > Hey, no one even objected to the prohibition against framing the AT&T > website yet! We don't care about that. I don't rule out someone distributing software licensed with the current license as part of non-free; if a maintainer wants to jump through whatever hoops are required, they are free to do so. I think if you got rid of the requirement to resubmit patches, there would be a better chance of a debian developer picking up the non- free package. -- Elie Rosenblum That is not dead which can eternal lie, http://www.cosanostra.net And with strange aeons even death may die. Admin / Mercenary / System Programmer - _The Necronomicon_
