Greetings! Hi Jeff! Jeffry Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<many good points omitted> > I agree with others that the Artistic is "problematic." Other alternatives > to look at are the new BSD and the MIT license, if you don't mind stuff > becoming proprietary. If you do, LGPL may be an alternative. Personally, I > think sticking to an existing license reduces all the "legal" questions, > especially for non-lawyer types. > > jeff > > I've forwarded this to debian-legal as well, and have received the following advice: ============================================================================= Brian Russo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > isn't this just the same Artistic license as Perl, etc is released > under? > > looks like it (i just skimmed), in which case it's DFSG-free. Could the owners be persuaded to licence their program under the disjunction of the Artistic license and the GPL? This is how Perl is licensed. Even though the Artistic licence is itself (I think) GPL-compatible, it's good to have the GPL as an explicit option, because then people can tell immediately, and without consulting a lawyer, that Perl's licence is GPL-compatible, and it can never be disputed in the future. If you haven't already done so, read this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#ArtisticLicense Edmund ============================================================================= The Artistic License is widely considered problematic, on account of it's vagueness. The FSF doesn't consider it a free license. I'm not sure if Debian has an offical stance on it. =20 Almost every piece of software that uses the Artistic License also allows the GPL as an alternative license (this is the way Perl works). This avoids the problems raised the by the Artistic License. =20 You should let the upstream authors know about these problems. If they really want people to be able to do all the things they mention without restriction, they should consider the X license. =20 =20 sam th =20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.abisource.com/~sam/ GnuPG Key: =20 http://www.abisource.com/~sam/key If they like the general tone of the Artistic license, you might suggest they look at the "Clarified Artistic License": http://www.appwatch.com/license/ncftp-3.0.2.txt This is listed on the FSF page as free and GPL compatible. Steve ============================================================================= Perhaps I could add a question: What is the goal in changing the license? What is the matter with the GPL? Take care, -- Camm Maguire [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================================================== "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
