FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May  9, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> It would be better to state that the software, as distributed by the
>> Fedora project, must abide by the Free Software definition and (or?)
>> the Open-Source Software definition.
>> 
>> Perhaps it would make sense to also add a note explaining that Fedora
>> is committed to not distributing [non-firmware] software in such a way
>> that the software wouldn't abide by these definitions, from the point
>> of view of the recipients.  E.g. software licensed under a Free
>> Software license but without corresponding sources.  If the reader
>> finds deviations s/he should report them.

> Doesn't
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-c23c2cd3782be842dc7ab40c35199c07cfbfe347
> already cover all that?

At first, I almost agreed with it.  Sorry that I forgot we already had
that bit.

However, thinking further, I came to the conclusion that it indeed
covers the clarification note in the second paragraph above, but it
doens't achieve the major goal of the first paragraph.

Omitting sources is just one of many ways people came up with to
deprive users of freedom.

Another possibility is that of restrictive patent licenses, and the
recent creative patent agreements we recently learned about, such as
that between Microsoft and Novell.

Yet another possibility would be trademark agreements that effectively
limited Fedora users' freedoms.


It would be far more comforting if Fedora committed itself to respect
its users' freedoms in the general terms established by the FSD and
the OSD, rather than to commit itself to not disrespect them in some
particular ways.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}