Re: [LAU] licensing fun

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 07:31:58AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Since the discussion re: GIG vs. SF2 has veered into the political
> nether realms I add this little tinder for the fire.

:-D

Ohhh, I tend to involuntary place everything into political nether
realms, it seems to be my faith.

> The licenses for Eisenkraut and FScape (both under the GPL) are
> restricted in similar fashion to LinuxSampler :

I'm very sorry to hear that :-(

> "please note that you are /not allowed/ to use this software if you are
> a member of a military or pharmaceutical or governmental institution
> (excluding public service in general and civil science/education). if
> you have sympathies for bad governments (applies to most countries), you
> should also opt to /not use/ this software. thank you."
>
> Perhaps this statement is tongue-in-cheek, but it isn't presented as a
> joke. While such restrictions may or not be contrary to the spirit of
> the GPL they are certainly contrary to the letter of the first of the
> FSF's Four Freedoms :

I think it would be something to worry about if those exceptions are
becoming popular among GPL programs.

> "The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)."
>
> There are no exceptions to that statement. Richard Stallman has been
> very clear on that particular point. To make any exception is to broach
> that freedom, and at that point the software cannot be called completely
> free. So now we can add those apps to the flame pile when the LS
> licensing issue arises. As it inevitably does...

Agree. I don't have sympathies for bad goverments (I usually don't
have sympathies for any goverment), but adding arbitrary restrictions
like this to the GPL is not a good thing...

> I never received an answer from the FSF re: the LS license exception. I
> didn't write to RMS. The FSF is supposed to respond to such enquiries,
> but I never got so much as an automated reply.

I do. Brett Smith replyed to my email on the LS exception (it was on
january 2007). He apologized for the delay in the response, and said
that "messages to this address often get backlogged, and we are always
working hard to keep up".

He said:

"We're already in touch with the LinuxSampler developers to discuss ways for
them to accomplish their goals without confusing the license like this."
[...]

> For the record: I like and use all those programs, and my conscience is
> relatively untroubled. I do wish they would remove the exceptions, but
> so far they haven't interfered with the program functions.

Maybe they will be willing to change their exception so it is only a
friendly, non mandatory request. For example, the vim editor contains
this notice:

  "Vim is Charityware. You can use and copy it as much as you like, but
  you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda."
  [...]

It's a nice request, of course, but it would be non-free if the donation
were mandatory. It is instead a friendly encouragement that is not part
of the license (the real license is below that notice in the same file).

We could try to suggest something like that for the developers of
FScape...
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Thu Sep 18 20:15:04 2008