FS/OSS license: not quite enough of a requirement

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May  9, 2007, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at jdub.homelinux.org> wrote:

> And Fedora cannot do anything about the Microsoft/Novell deal.  They are
> exercising a loophole in the GPL.  How is Fedora supposed to fight that?

By stating that Fedora will respect its users' freedoms.  As a
consequente, it won't ever distribute software under such agreements.
I.e., Fedora wouldn't enter such an agreement.

Not that I doubt we wouldn't.  The thing to keep in mind is that this
public commitment is not just for ourselves, it's for the public out
there, that doesn't trust ourselves as much as we know we can.

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

> Such as the one with the Mozilla for Firefox/Thunderbird?

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I was alluding to, even though I don't
quite know whether the Mozilla trademarks actually limit users'
freedoms pertaining to these programs.

>> It would be far more comforting if Fedora committed itself to respect
>> its users' freedoms in the general terms established by the FSD and
>> the OSD, rather than to commit itself to not disrespect them in some
>> particular ways.

> We _do_ use the OSD/OSI definition.

No

> It's the very first license category on that page.

Which brings us back to how the thread started.  It's not about the
license (which is what the page states).  It's about the definition.
It's about ensuring that Fedora will not be part of schemes to
restrain the freedoms of users, in the ways that would render the
software non-compliant with the FSD or the OSD.  I.e., that Fedora
won't impose such restrictions itself, and won't pass on software
under such restrictions imposed by third parties.

-- 
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}