[Approval request] CMGPL licence

[Matthew C. Weigel]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Marcel van der Boom wrote:

> Suppose for a moment that I have permission from the FSF, would that
> change anything for you?
> Are you opposing in principle or to the actual changes we propose?

Can't speak for anyone else, but I am opposed in principle to the
*lack* of changes you propose.  The GPL sans preamble doesn't need to
be a separate entry in the OSI's list of licenses.  I can understand
that it's annoying to have the preamble, but I don't think your minor
annoyance is worth the extra time.  Further, it is not entirely clear
that your license is GPL-compatible, and it is absolutely ridiculous to
have two licenses, which differ in only one clause discussed below,
that are not compatible.

Also, your wording change - "at least one of the following" - is no
more clear than the original, as the condition is met once "one of the
following" is done (regardless of whether any more of them are done).

I'd also recommend that section 3c should be included.  If I downloaded
a binary to my computer to get it onto a floppy diskette to share with
a friend who is having trouble with networking (let's pretend for a
second the binary is a network driver), I'd have to *first* download
the source code to the driver.  I don't think anyone doubts that anyone
in that position will ignore the license, and I don't think that you
actually care.  At that point, it might as well be in the license.
-- 
 Matthew Weigel
 Research Systems Programmer
 mcweigel at cs.cmu.edu ne weigel at pitt.edu



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