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[Savannah-register-public] Re: [gnu.org #354920] ISC/OpenBSD License
From: |
Sylvain Beucler |
Subject: |
[Savannah-register-public] Re: [gnu.org #354920] ISC/OpenBSD License |
Date: |
Mon, 4 Feb 2008 21:38:04 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.17+20080114 (2008-01-14) |
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