Free World Licence and clauses 5,6,8 & 9 of OSS definition.

[Ross N. Williams]

At 8:34 PM -0700 21/10/99, Nick Moffitt wrote:
>Quoting Ross N. Williams:
>>>
>> % 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product.
>> % The rights attached to the program must not depend on the
>> % program's being part of a particular software distribution.
>> % If the program is extracted from that distribution and used
>> % or distributed within the terms of the program's license,
>> % all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have
>> % the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction
>> % with the original software distribution.
>> 
>> The FWL does not discriminate in relation to a PARTICULAR
>> software distribution. Instead, it discriminates in relation
>> to a CLASS of distributions - the free ones. 
>
>        Interesting.  This could be a potentially necessary change to
>the DFSG and the OSD.

(What's DFSG?)

My current position is that I am of the understanding that the decision
of this list is that a free-platform restricted licence does not
conform to the OSD. Consequently, I am about to purge the term
"open source" from all my software's documentation in favour of
"source-available" or "open code" or something.

So please let me know if the "decision" is likely to be reversed.

I do not know what the right policy decision is, but I do think
that my Free World Licence offers enough freedoms to be a strong
candidate to be called "open source".


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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