On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 at 11:57:08PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote: > The requirement to publish changes, even if the changes are not being > used by the public in any way, violates an essential privacy right.
I had never understood the right to privacy to be a goal of Free Software licensing. The GPL, in fact, arguably removes the right to keep personal coding techniques private. > The requirement to notify a specific party when you release a modified > version is perhaps not fatal, but I have a bad feeling about it. Agreed. Still, are we saying that this is "not fatal" in the sense that a license with this property is still Free Software? > The patent clauses are curious and I can see the danger in the fact that > Apple can keep you from ever getting a chance to fight a patent in court. > On the other hand, Apple has granted use of an unknown number of patents > for use in free software. This seems like a good thing. > > These are two separate actions. The latter would be a good thing, not > a problem, of course, but the former is a problem. So, then perhaps the requirement to make your code available publicly if used for commercial purposes is ok but the termination of copyright due to patent litigation is not. > (Though in fact they have not granted "use in free software" of these > patents, only use in this particular software, whose freeness or not > is the question here.) I agree that this is a "bug" in their license. But this touches on the larger and more complex matter of "Free" but incompatible licenses. As the GPL demonstrates, limiting the use of your intellectual property to a particular sphere of other licensed material is apparently fair play. -- _______________________________________________________________________ Ean Schuessler Director of New Products and Technologies Novare International Inc. The Unstoppable Fist of Digital Action *** WARNING: This signature may contain jokes.
