Artistic License (was Plan 9)

[David Johnson]

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Rick Moen wrote:

> DFSG provision #1 ("Free Distribution") begins:  "The license of a
> Debian component may not restrict any party from selling or giving away
> the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution
> containing programs from several different sources."

Quickly grabbing my copy of the OSD to both see if it says the same
thing, and to keep this on topic :-) I find that yes, it essentially
says the same thing, so let's steer this on topic...

The AL clearly meets this point. So what's the controversy? Why is
there a comment in the OSD about this clause having to be put in to
satisfy the AL? Why is so obnoxious about allowing people to aggregate
AL software with non-AL software? If the aggregation stuff were not in
the definition, would not the AL still meet it?

Yes, I've heard the argument that one could write a 5 line proprietary
package, aggregate with AL software, then sell the lot for
"unreasonable" prices. But one can do the same with GPL software,
can't they? What am I missing here?

-- 
David Johnson
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