FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 10, 2007, "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 18:07 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On May  9, 2007, "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 20:33 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> >> 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.

>> > Restrictive patent licenses don't qualify for Fedora as is.

>> Excellent.  Where's that stated?

> It is implicit in the "only licenses approved by the FSF or OSI are OK
> for Fedora".

I'm afraid it isn't.  AFAIK GPLv3 will be the first Free Software
license to stop the kind of practice I'm alluding to.

> Unless you think that the FSF or the OSI have approved any restrictive
> patent licenses...

No, but they have approved licenses that don't stop involved parties
from colluding to deny users their freedoms through patent agreements
and restrictive patent licenses, which effectively renders the
software non-Free for its recipients.

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

>> > Trademark or patent agreements are a board issue, but I can't see the
>> > board agreeing to those sorts of things.

FWIW, I misunderstood what you wrote.  I seemed to me that you were
saying the board wouldn't agree to making a public commitment not to
accept such agreements, rather than what I now think you meant, that
the board wouldn't accept such agreements.  Right?

>> What sorts of things exactly?  It depends on what you understand by
>> "limiting users' freedoms."  Requiring certain images to be removed,
>> for example, doesn't.  Howver, requiring them to be replaced to keep
>> the software functional, and having lots and lots of them, would turn
>> the replacement into an unsurmountable work, which would effectively
>> limit the freedoms.  What do you think the board would disagree with?

> I don't think the Fedora Board would make any trademark or patent
> agreements that would limit user freedoms.

Then I guess the board might be willing to make clear its
unwillingness to accept such agreements, no?

-- 
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}