Re: “GNU software is distributed under the terms of [copyleft] licenses” (was: A GNU “social contract”?)

[Mark Wielaard]

On Sat, 2019-10-26 at 02:35 +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> > * GNU licenses uphold user freedom
> > 
> > The GNU Project has designed software licenses to ensure developers
> > cannot strip off user freedom from GNU software—“copyleft”
> > licenses.  GNU software is distributed under the terms of these
> > licenses.
> 
> Sorry, but thatʼs simply untrue.   Few GNU software packages are
> under lax, non-copyleft licences, namely: ncurses, nana, speex.  And
> there might be a good reason for that [1].

I agree. It would say something like "We prefer to distribute under the
terms of these licenses."

This is also partly why I would recommend trying to merge points 1
(freedom), 2 (uphold freedom) and 4 (beyond software freedom). That
makes it easier to explain what compromises we do and do not make to
uphold user freedom.

Cheers,

Mark