Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 23, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Gordon Messmer wrote:

> You do have the freedom and right to license
> your own work under any terms you want.

Nope.  You have that legal right, but you're only operating within
your freedom as long as your choice respects others' freedom.  If it
doesn't, then you're using your right to exert power.

> You do have the freedom and right to redistribute other works under
> other licenses, free or with other arrangements.

You are entitled to the freedom to redistribute works, subject to
respecting others' freedoms.  The choice of license is not part of
freedom, it's part of power.  If there wasn't copyright law, nobody
would need any license from you.  Copyright law creates a legal right
that gives you power to control how others can use your own.

And then, as a consequence of this very law, you don't always have a
right to redistribute works.  Others are legally entitled to exert
power over you, even when that conflicts with your freedom.

So, no, because of copyright, you may end up without the right and
without the freedom you claim above.

> But you must give up your freedom and rights or you are unable to
> participate in distributing these things as part of a work that
> contains any GPL-covered material.

The "or" denounces your syllogism.  The "must" is inappropriate when
there's an alternative.

As explained above, because of copyright law, you end up without that
freedom and right by default, even though you should have them.  The
GPL respects the freedom to (re)distribute the program that you're
entitled to, restoring your right to do that which copyright law took
away, but not restoring your power to control how others can use the
work that you're using to derive another work you want to distribute.

The GPL doesn't require you to give up anything.  It only restores
some of your rights that copyright law took away, so that essential
freedoms are respected for you and for every other user.

> But the point is that you also cannot impose fewer restrictions,

1. a grant of rights cannot possibly impose restrictions to whatever
you could do before you received those rights.  It's a grant, so it
adds.  It's not a contract, so it can't take away.

2. you can grant additional permissions as to any part of the whole,
if you're the copyright holder for that part.  Nothing whatsoever
stops you from doing that: not copyright law, not any copyright
license.

> Please point out any exception you can find to section 2b.

Here:

 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
 * are met:
 * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
 * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
 *    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
 * 3. [rescinded 22 July 1999]
 * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
 *    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
 *    without specific prior written permission.

additional permissions on top of those granted by the GPL.  No matter
what the GPL says, you still have the permissions above as to any file
in which these permissions are written down.

What makes you think they're revoked just because the whole is under
the GPL?  Only your flawed theory that the GPL imposes restrictions
that would somehow take away rights you had or received with the
program.  Show what part of the GPL says "you give up rights you had
before", or that "imposes restrictions", or hire a lawyer to explain
this to you.

Note: "you may do X as long as Y" is not a restriction, it's a grant.
"you may not do Z under this license" is not a restriction, it's a
statement of fact, if doing Z requires permission from the copyright
holder.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}