Hi, On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 02:59:02PM -0500, Brett Smith via RT wrote: > On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 08:49 -0500, Sylvain Beucler via RT wrote: > > Can you tell me if the license, when it uses "and" instead of > > "and/or": > > - is free software > > - is compatible with the GNU GPL? > > The answer to both questions is generally yes. > > The reason we ask for clarification when this comes up is because this > is the wording that caused so much trouble around Pine. I don't know > how familiar you are with this situation, but to put it briefly, the > developers of Pine argued that when the license said you could > "distribute and modify" the software, that did *not* mean that you could > distribute modified versions. Of course, their interpretation > contravened the intent of a long history of similar licenses, but we > didn't want to escalate the situation at the time. > > We currently have a policy that we will treat such licenses as free > until the licensor gives us a reason not to -- and if that time comes, > it's quite possible that we'd be willing to escalate the situation now, > at least if the software was worth fighting for. > > If you could explain the history and see if that might help convince > them to change, I would appreciate it. But if they don't, you can still > accept this software.
I did so and tried to explain him about the issue. Now let's wait for his answer. Tassilo Philipp <tphilipp>: Sorry, I won't "clarify" the license part, because it says "modeled after the ISC license" and not "this is the ISC license". Sylvain Beucler <Beuc>: Hi, Can you tell us why that would be a problem? After more research, the reason we ask is that the Pine program was distributed under a license which had this kind of wording, and their authors weirdly argued that this allowed to privately modify and distribute verbatim, but did not allow to distribute modified versions. - Their position: http://www.washington.edu/pine/faq/legal.html - A Debian developer commenting on the issue: http://people.debian.org/~terpstra/message/20021112.091356.2048f162.en.html This made the software non-free. That why we'd appreciate you change "and" in "and/or" - not in order to mimic the ISC, but instead to avoid this possible license misinterpretation. Regards. https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?7734 -- Sylvain
