Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> > Why not ? It would say : upstream can redistribute under the QPL and any >> > other >> > licence that is considered DFSG-Free, including the BSD licence. >> > >> > What do you find non-free in this ? >> >> It compels me to grant upstream a right which upstream will not grant >> me. If that were symmetric, I would not object to this under DFSG 3. > > Well, take the example of the BSD for example ? It is in no way symmetric.
Indeed, the BSD is no not symmetric. It is more permissive than a copyleft. *Compelling* the grant of a BSD license to others is less permissive than a symmetric license: I have to give up more than I get. >> Depending on phrasing, I might still find it objectionable, but I'd >> have to think long and hard about the differences between compelled >> grant of license to recipients, compelled grant of license to a third >> party, and compelled transmission of data. The first is free, the >> third is not, and the second... well, I'm really not sure. > > Notice that nowhere in the QPL does it say that the original author can > compell the patch from you, he can only get it freely from either you if you > publicly distribute it, or from one of the chain of people you distribute it > too. You mean other than QPL 6, right? Yes, the OCaml license I've last seen has no compelled transmission of data, since it overrides QPL 6. I just provided those three examples -- copyleft, compelled asymmetric licensing, and compelled transmission -- as examples of a range with one end certainly free and one end certainly non-free. >> >> It however would really improve the ocaml freeness, if ocaml itself were >> >> dual-licensed under a 2-clause BSD license (or X11 or Expat or...) >> >> besides the QPL. In that case Debian could choose to distribute >> >> under the 2-clause BSD license (or X11 or...) and everyone could be >> >> happy... >> > >> > Notice that the situation is not exactly the same. I didn't say the ocaml >> > would be dual licenced, but that upstream has the right to distribute your >> > changes under some random free licence, including the 2-clause BSD one, to >> > the >> > people they chose to. Not necessarily the world at large though. >> >> But of course those people could distribute it further, under their >> permissive license, right? Because if they can't, then it's not free. >> So this would at least allow somebody to buy and fork Ocaml into a >> free-Ocaml and a QPL'd Ocaml. > > Indded. Now, this is no different than the pure BSD stuff, so if the BSD is > free, what is the difference with this one ? This is quite different from pure BSD stuff. If X gives Y code under the BSD license, Y can modify it and do as he pleases, including giving it and a copy of the license to Z. If A gives B code under this QPL' you mention, B must give A a license to distribute B's code under the QPL, and under some other free license. But if A then gives C a license to A's code plus B's code under the BSD license, C has freedom with respect to the code and could freely contribute it to Debian. If we got the Caml code that way, that would be great. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
