On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:19:57 +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:04:41 +1000, Ben Finney wrote: >> > You're not free to modify gnuplot and redistribute the result. >> > >> > That you're free to distribute patches is nice, but it's not enough >> > to make the work free. The freedom to help people by giving them an >> > *already-modified* gnuplot is restricted by the copyright holder. >> > >> > It's an artificial restriction on redistribution of derived works, >> > making them second-class for the prupose of getting them into >> > people's hands. >> >> Yes it is. It seems a strange, unnecessary restriction. But is it >> sufficient to make it non-free? I don't think so. > > I do, because a natural, beneficial act (modify the work and > redistribute it) that has no technical reason to restrict, is > artifically restricted.
We agree that the restriction is artificial, and I think irrational (although I'd be interested in hearing the gnuplot developers' reasoning before making a final judgment). But I just don't see the requirement that modified software be distributed in form X (original source + diffs) versus form Y (modified source in a tar ball) or form Z (an rpm) to be that big a deal. Not enough to make it "non-free software". I simply don't think that having to run some variation on patch -i patchfile.patch is a requirement so onerous that it makes the gnuplot licence non-free. Perhaps I'm just more tolerant of eccentricities than you :) -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
