Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

Gordon Messmer yinyang at eburg.com
Sat Jul 26 21:52:04 UTC 2008


Antonio Olivares wrote:
> 
> I respect your stance on the license issue.  In fact I would agree
> that most of the parts are good.  Many projects use the license which
> shows that it is not totally bad.  There are however certain
> restrictions and gotchas.  For instance in the Open Source
> Definitions
> 
> http://opensource.org/docs/osd
> 
> The GPL could violate 9)
> 
> 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software


"The license must not place restrictions on other software that is 
distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license 
must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium 
must be open-source software. "

The final passage of the GPL makes it clear that there is no intention 
on the copyright holder's part to claim that the GPL must apply to 
"other software".  Therefore it does not contradict or violate the 9th 
guideline for the OSD.

> The bad part is the one that hurts.  The one where you have to do ...
> in order to _____.  They take away your freedom as the sole author of
> a certain project.

No they don't, and they can not.  If you are the sole author of a 
certain project, then you can license it in any way that you want, 
including under multiple different licenses, or changing the license at 
any time (though not retroactively).




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