Paul Hoffman <paul(_dot_)hoffman(_at_)vpnc(_dot_)org> writes:
At 11:15 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote:
If the trust uses a software license for code that doesn't meet the
requirements in, say, the DFSG, would you consider that a failure? If
that happens, Debian cannot include such code.
At 11:25 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote:
There are examples of projects with good intentions that want to give
everyone the right to use code they publish in any way to end up with
copying conditions that prevent some subset of the community from using
the software.
Look at the mailing list archive of debian-legal. Most of the software
licenses that are reviewed there have been written by organizations that
wants open source-friendly distribution of their code, but happens to
make one mistake or the other.
These are interesting points, but maybe not interesting in the way
you intended. If some large group (in this example, the Debian folks)
want to have some restriction on what they can use in their software,
that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the IETF needs to do anything
beyond what it wants to do in order to cater to that group's current
desires. Every such group could act just like the IETF does: look
around at what the problems it is facing and change the way it acts
based on an analysis of the problems.
We disagree here. I believe the IETF has a responsibility to chose a
license that works well for a large majority of Internet users. To some
extents, the IETF needs to cater for organizations that make up parts of
the Internet.
It is the responsibility of the IETF Trust to consider what its
actions would be for the whole world. These distributions are
important. So is CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc. So is
TeenyStartupNascentISPEtc.
We agree here, but if you believe this, I don't follow your first
paragraph.
If people involved in free software licensing have trouble getting this
right, I have little confidence that people not involved in the free
software licensing will get the right.
Fully agree. And this is an indication that the FOSS folks have equal
responsibility for the problem you describe.
Definitely. But that doesn't make the problem smaller.
Providing them with some
mechanism to test their proposed license against (i.e., the
OSD/FSD/DFSG) will help to avoid at least the most basic mistakes.
Fully agree. Offer to help the IETF Trust with this; I suspect that
CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc will.
I have sent a note to Ray and Kurtis about offering to help the Trust
chose a suitable software license.
That's different that forcing a requirement into the spec.
I disagree completely with the notion that the spec doesn't have to be
sufficiently clear to allow the Trust to work out a license on its own.
/Simon
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