From: Jeremy Tregunna <jtregunna@...>
Date: 2005-10-03T07:59:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby licence...


On 2-Oct-05, at 6:51 PM, Greg Brown wrote:

>
> Jeremy Tregunna wrote:
>>
>> Not necessarily, the license just must not explicitly forbid 
>> commercial
>> sale to be GPL compatible.
>
>> From Richard Stallman:
>
> " The 'Ruby license' does not give permission to sell copies.
>   So it is not a free software license.

I was talking about the GPL not the Ruby License.

>   Only the fact that Ruby is also available under the GPL
>   makes Ruby free software "
>
> In order to be GPL compatible or to be free software (according to the
> FSF, at least ), you must explicitly protect all of the essential
> freedoms of free software.

No, in order to be GPL compatible (from a legal standpoint) you need 
only to implicitly permit everything the GPL would, and not explicitly 
add restrictions. What the FSF wants and what it is entitled to are two 
entirely different things. I need not explicitly permit everything the 
GPL does to be GPL compatible (c.f. 3 clause BSD License, etc).

> For the specifics:
> http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html

I'm well informed with the FSF's idiology; I can agree in points, but 
not in its entirety; and I will not argue idiology with you or anyone 
else on this list.

--
Jeremy Tregunna
jtregunna@blurgle.ca

"If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be 
the process of putting them in." --Dykstra