Re: Draft new DFSG - r1.4
On Fri, Nov 27, 1998 at 02:56:25AM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> (b) The source code must be available.
- (b) The source code must be available.
+ (b) The complete source code must be available.
As an (extreme) example, you can download diffpack's source code from a
server in Netherlands, but there's one file missing, and you can't do zip
without that file -- ok, it would be possible to guess the contents of the
file, but the license forbids that; my point is, it could be argued that
diffpack *is* Open Source because you *can* download the source. (I'm not
saying diffpack's license is DFSG-free by any strecht of the imagination --
it poses a number of restrictions enforced by the mentioned mechanism)
> (g) The licence(s) must not allow the copyright or patent holder(s) to
> terminate the licence(s).
Does this mean that the author can't change the license from v1.0 to v2.0
(v1.0 free, v2.0 not)? Or does this mean that the author can't say "version
1.0 is no longer free?" (I guess the question is what does "terminate" mean?
I looked it in the dictionary, but I still don't understand what "terminate"
means in a legal context)
> (a) Source code has the meaning given for it in the GNU General Public
> Licence, version 2.
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means
all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated
interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation
and installation of the executable.
IMO, there are two things defined here, "source code" and "complete source
code" (but I concur, in the context of the GPL, "source code" means
"complete source code")
> * Fork the software and competely reorganise the sources even though
> the original author hates you for it.
I can't help recalling some recent thread on -policy everytime I read
this... <g>
Marcelo
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