FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 11, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On May  9, 2007, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> Commitment is the first thing established in the guidelines
>> 
>> Where?
>> 

> In the licensing section where it says we are only going to include
> software under the FSF free software definition or OSI open source
> definition.

No, it doesn't say that, and this is what I've been trying to explain
since I started this thread.

What is says is that we're going to require approved licenses.

But being under an approved license doesn't imply being FS or OSS for
our users.

We've taken care of ensuring we won't include software under such
licenses without sources, but we haven't taken care of promising to
our users that we'd offer them the sources.

And then, one more time, omitting sources is just one of the various
possible ways of disrespecting users' freedoms.  Entering patent or
trademark agreements that put us at an advantage position over our
users could amount to that as well.


It boils down to the point that everything I've seen about our
guidelines states what we require from upstream, but not what we
promise downstream.  We don't commit to not being the weak link in the
chain.  And I think we should.

> For all these we are including SRPMS so source is always going to
> available to end users with the exception of firmware.

See, we agree we ought to do that.  Then why wouldn't we make this
promise out in the clear to our users?

> Your "Public Promise" proposal that makes it part of policy makes no
> mention of firmware and hence would be inconsistent with the rest of
> the guidelines.

Right.  I even mentioned it in the paragraph above the proposal.

> It does not stop things like including Fleundo mp3 plugin (which is
> what I think you have in mind)

No, I don't have any such specifics in mind.  My goal is a broad
promise to respect our users' freedoms.  Do you have any opposition to
respecting our users' freedoms?  Does anyone?

I really thought we had consensus that this is what we wanted, and
that our policies not making this clear was just an oversight.

I really don't understand the kind of opposition I'm getting in this
issue.  I know I've brought up other controversial ones, but this is
not it.  This is just meant to codify what I thought we had consensus
on.


Now, the decision on whether to include software that practices
patents or not is almost entirely orthogonal to that of respecting
users' freedoms.  Patents are territorial.  If we could legally
include that software such that users would decide what they can
legally use and what they can't, we wouldn't be disrespecting anyone's
freedom.

The problem is that the legal system doesn't quite work that way.  So
we instead have to refrain from distributing software that is subject
to US patents because Fedora is based in the US.  Well, too bad.  But
it has nothing to do with respecting freedoms.


It WOULD become related with freedoms the moment we entered an
agreement that would restrain the freedoms of our downstream users.
Then we'd be joining the dark side and colluding to restrain freedoms
of users, even those who didn't need a patent license in the first
place.

I doubt any of us would like Fedora to do any such thing, and I hoped
everyone would feel comfortable if Fedora promised not to join the
dark side.  Does anyone disagree with my assessment?  Does anyone have
a problem with making such a promise?

>> Probably not, since the FSD is about software, and documentation is
>> not software, even though it's an important element for every piece of
>> software.

> Non-free documentation is ok to you?

No, not really.  But this is just a distraction.  The point I'm
discussing is software freedom.  The promise I mentioned is about
software alone.  And there are reasons for that.  We have our
trademarked images that we don't want to release under a Free Software
license, particularly the GPL, because it would likely obviate the
trademark, or at least make it unenforceable.  Since that's not
software, this constraint may be acceptable.

Non-Free documentation is much worse than non-Free trademarked logos,
so such constraints are less acceptable.

But for software, I wouldn't like Fedora to make any such concessions
whatsoever, and strive to be 100% Free.

-- 
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}