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

[Carlos O'Donell]

On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 5:03 PM Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

That sounds like a good compromise.

Cheers,
Carlos.