Re: License policy proposal

[David Lawyer <dave@lafn.org>]

> >So in conclusion I think we need our own license that would ban
> >advertising.  Better yet would be to get Richard Stallman to change
> >his license.
> >			David Lawyer
> 
On Sun, Sep 10, 2000 at 10:43:50PM -0700, Poet/Joshua Drake wrote:
> The advertising issue is easily solved by the proposal. It specifically
> states that the LDP will not accept documents that include advertising.

Unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem.  First, if the doc is
modifiable, anyone can just add advertising to it.  Second, one may
use frames for displaying it and put flashing advertising in one of
the frames.  Another way is to force the reader to look at an ad after
reading each page (the "pager" alternates between ads and the doc).  A
good license can prohibit this.

There is another problem too and that's the dual licensing problem.
As some of you know, Star Office is to be released under both GPL and
another license.  Unfortunately, the other license takes away implicit
rights granted by GPL.  In this sense it's a sham since some people
think that it grants all the rights given by GPL.  Can one license
take away implicit rights granted by the other one?  Well, to find out
you would have to go the Star Office's court (the one located near
their corporate offices) since it's specified in their license.  GPL
is silent on this issue which implicitly implies that the venue is any
appropriate court.

There are other rights that are also taken away.  You can't modify the
software any way you want.  It may be legal to take away such rights.
Even for rights explicitly granted by GPL, GPL does not say that these
rights are inalienable.  Thus any license needs to prohibit dual
licensing.  You might say: What if the two licenses have the same
provisions but say them in different words?  In this case the licenses
should be merged into one license.

			David Lawyer


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