Stephen Turner wrote: > I think that the original complaint, and some of the responses, are missing > the point. It is explicitly permitted to charge someone for sending them the > program, and "reasonable" does not specify any limit. This seems to satisfy > the DFSG perfectly well to me.
The way I and others have read "reasonable" is that it does specify a limit of some sort. That might not be your intent, but my dictionary says: "not excessive or immoderate; within due limits; proper". And it isn't clear how the limit should be interpreted -- is it what's reasonable to you, to society at large, or to a judge? Compare with the artistic license which explicitly defines "Reasonable copying fee" (in a fairly useless way that anyone can get around, but still). > If you're still not convinced (is there any consensus on this?) I think there's some consensus that the license is unclear and may have freeness issues. We're all over the map as to the specifics. > I'm willing to change the first sentence to: > > You may charge for distributing the program, but you must not do anything > > to suggest to the person to whom it is distributed that analog is anything > > other than free software. > > I actually don't think that this changes the meaning at all, but I do think > that it weakens the emphasis. Ok, I see what you're doing. I agree that, given the way you were meaning that "reasonable" to be used, there is no change. It's a lot clearer and non subject to misinterpretation or worrys about what is reasonable with this change. I say, do it! There is, unfortunatly, some time pressure on me to get this resolved soon, since we are about to freeze part of debian, which includes analog. -- see shy jo
