2009/3/24 Japheth <m...@japheth.de>: > I'm not a lawyer. But I used my brain and asked myself the following > questions: > > 1. What is Open Watcom, is it a part of Sybase? > 2. If OW is NOT a part of Sybase, is it a - juristic - person which probably > could have a - disclosed - contract with Sybase concerning the distribution of > the old "Watcom" source code? > > I answered both questions with No. My conclusion therefore is: I can do the > same what Open Watcom does, that is, modify the source and distribute it. So > IMO your conclusion is wrong.
True. Also, clearly, the license satisfies OSI's conditions. http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd The reason why is that you must read clause 2.1 and 2.2 as *both* giving permission: they do not restrict each other. I.e.: Clause 2.2 allows you to do something with Covered Code (which is the thing that matters here) subject to clauses 2.1a,b,c, and 2.2b,c,d,e; Clause 2.1 allows you to do *more* for personal/internal use of Original Code (the pre OW1.0 source code release by Sybase, and Sybase copyrighted subset of the current OW code): for personal/internal use of Original Code you may ignore clauses 2.2b,c,d and e. The Sybase license is almost the same as an older version of the Apple Public Source License (APSL), so the reasons why it doesn't satisfies FSF's conditions are here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/historical-apsl.html Now, Apple released a new version http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html which is accepted by the FSF and Fedora...(but not Debian: it considers it "almost free") A draft 2.0 license for OW was published over 5 years ago that makes it more clear and very similar to APSL 2.0... unfortunately it never got post draft. I guess Sybase lawyers had other priorities... http://www.openwatcom.org/ftp/devel/license-2.pdf Debian, by the way, has DOSEMU and FreeDOS in the "contrib" section because of the compiler license issue. It is not in "nonfree" because the source code of DOSEMU and FreeDOS themselves are free. IIRC, SciTech, the company that was but is no longer involved in opensourcing Watcom wanted a much more liberal license such as the 3-clause BSD license but Sybase decided otherwise. Bart (IANAL) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
