Free World Licence.

[Ross N. Williams]

At 4:28 AM -0400 18/10/99, Justin Wells wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 18, 1999 at 04:39:35PM +0930, Ross N. Williams wrote:
>> I have created a new free software licence on which I would appreciate
>> some feedback. The licence is called the "Free World Licence" and its
>> main feature is that it allows the software to be used on free platforms
>> only (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, GNU/HURD etc - the "Free World").
>
>...
>The *BSD platforms ostensibly meet your criteria, but one of the things 
>their licenses allow is conversion to a type of OS that does not meet 
>yoru criteria. Anyone is free to take FreeBSD and make a proprietary, 
>non-free OS out of it. The presence of software under your license
>would encumber the system such that it could no longer be released
>in a non-free way.
>...
>Whether or not you agree with this property of the BSD license, the 
>point is the BSD developers agree with it, and wouldn't want to include
>your software on their distribution.

This is a good point, and one I hadn't thought of.

I guess one way of dealing with this would be to change the FWL so that
it allows an executable to be used on a non-free platforms so long as it
also runs on at least one free platform too. I didn't want to do this
because it would mean that someone could translate my product into Java
and then run it on everything! :-)

I will think about it, but I think I'm going to have to wear this
consequence. What a pity.

Ross.

Dr Ross N. Williams (ross at rocksoft.com), +61 8 8232-6262 (fax-6264).
Director, Rocksoft Pty Ltd, Adelaide, Australia: http://www.rocksoft.com/ 
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