FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 04:18 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> > In our packaging guidelines
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-76294f12c6b481792eb001ba9763d95e2792e825
> > we state:
> > 
> >   The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community
> >   to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively
> >   from open source software.  In accordance with that, all packages
> >   included in Fedora must be covered under an open source license.
> > 
> >   We clarify an open source license in three ways:
> >   [...]
> > 
> > Drawing a line on licensing requirements is good, but I've recently
> > realized (see below) that this is not quite enough to ensure that
> > Fedora users aren't misled into loss of freedom by the Fedora project
> > itself.
> > 
> > Consider a Free Software package licensed under a permissive license,
> > such as the MIT license.
> > 
> > Consider that someone makes changes to the program and releases the
> > whole under the same license, but refrains from publishing the
> > corresponding sources.
> > 
> > Is this modified package eligible for inclusion in Fedora?
> > 
> > It certainly is under a Free Software license, but it certainly isn't
> > Free Software any more.
> > 
> > 
> > This is not a theoretical situation.  For the past month, I've been
> > working on code that was mostly Free Software, but whose integrator
> > had refrained from publishing corresponding sources of included Free
> > Software packages, even the LGPLed ones.  Not the only kind of license
> > infringement in that package, mind you.
> > 
> > They even licensed their *own* code under the LGPL, but they didn't
> > publish the corresponding source code either (which AFAIK is not a
> > license violation AFAIK, but IANAL)
> > 
> > A few more details at http://www.fsfla.org/?q=en/node/157
> > An upcoming article will cover it in far more detail.
> > 
> > 
> > Anyhow, the point is that it's not enough for there to be an
> > applicable license that is a Free Software license (or "open source
> > license", per the definition in the Fedora packaging guidelines).
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> > 
> > Makes sense?
> 
> Doesn't 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-c23c2cd3782be842dc7ab40c35199c07cfbfe347 
> already cover all that?

Yes, from what I can see.

josh