Thanasis Kinias <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I've been in communication with upstream, and he says that the only > thing he intends to prohibit is someone charging money for his free > program
Like, say, putting the program on a storage medium and charging people for it? Or charging money to install the program? Or charging money to include it as part of a service? Many people do those things and more with Debian or parts of it, and we want that to continue. > (or charging money for a simple dump of the output of his free > program; he specifically says he has no objection otherwise to its > use in the course of commercial or any other activity. That's already too much. Free software includes the freedom to charge money for it. > I _think_ that is good enough to move the program out of non-free, > as I can't see what part of DFSG is being violated. The only > question I had was about `No Discrimination Against Fields of > Endeavor', but upstream assures he that is not the intent. That's a contradiction. "Charge money for the software" *is* a field of endeavour, that in no way restricts the freedom of the software. To deny the recipient the freedom to charge money is to make the software non-free. > Upstream can't relicense under GPL, for example, because he has > accepted code from other contributors under the existing terms. That's always an unfortunate situation, to be sure. It's not impossible, though, as demonstrated by the relicensing that occurred with Linux (from an early non-free license to GPLv2). Or he could attempt to contact those people and get their permission to change the license terms on a future release. -- \ "I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me." -- | `\ Emo Philips | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
