Re: Fwd: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Free Software Magazine

[Robin Green]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 11:52:16PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Jason Clifford wrote:
> > What makes you think a magazine should be published under a software
> > license? It's not software so the licensing requirements are different.
> 
> Maybe or maybe not, but the desired freedoms are the same. Personally,
> I think that if it is stored "in" a computer, it's probably software.
> That's not really important to the freedom point, though.
> 
> Now, this Free Software Magazine is a lot better than its
> competitors. It's been more liberal on copyright than any other
> I've seen lately and should be applauded for it.

Agreed.

> Tom asked us to
> promote it to others and I offered comments on what I think would
> make it more "buyable": top is an online service with annual
> archive volumes. The other things mostly discourage *me* from
> subscribing, which makes me less likely to promote it to others.
> I think I've been clear about that.
> 
> I dislike the FDL's compromise that allows anyone to forever
> stain the written work with adverts yet still claim it is "free"
> in some way. 

That's a very good point.

> What makes it right for text authors to impose that
> restriction on others when we think program authors shouldn't? If
> someone does that to BSD'd software, then we don't call it free
> software any more.

That depends. What is commonly known as an "advertising clause", as
in e.g. Apache, would be more properly called an "acknowledgement
clause" - it only requires acknowledgements of who wrote this
code in derivative work. The FSF says of the original BSD license
with such an "acknowledgement clause":

"This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license with a serious 
flaw: the ``obnoxious BSD advertising clause''. The 
flaw is not fatal; that is, it does not render the software non-free. But it 
does cause practical problems, including 
incompatibility with the GNU GPL."

Tacking on political messages (about things other than software freedom,
of course!) or adverts which went beyond mere acknowledgements, and
requiring them to be carried, would certainly make a piece of software
non-free, there's no doubt about that.

-- 
Robin

pgpNfG6vEYBNB.pgp
Description: PGP signature