Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 10:28:29AM -0800, Andrew wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 09:37:09AM -0800, Eric Sandall wrote:
> > There are two parts to this revision of our Social Contract[0] (SC) that 
> > I'd
> > like to propose.
> > 
> > The first, this one, is to change some of the wording in Article I of our 
> > SC,
> > which currently states:
> > 
> >     * 1* Sourcemage Will Remain 100% Free
> > 
> > 
> > We promise to keep the Sourcemage GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free 
> > (as in
> > freedom). This means that all software we release will be licensed under 
> > the
> > GNU Public License, and all of the software included in our distribution 
> > will
> > be under a GPL compatible license, as defined by the Free Software 
> > Foundation
> > (fsf.org). All of our documentation will be released under the GNU Free
> > Documentation License. While we recognize that these are not the only 
> > "free"
> > software licenses, we choose to maintain the simplicity that this solution
> > provides. We will support our users who develop and run non-free software 
> > on
> > SMGL, but we will never make the core system depend on an item of non-free
> > software.
> > 
> > This is what we intend, but this part is where my contention is:
> > "...and all of the software included in our distribution will be under a 
> > GPL
> > compatible license, as defined by the Free Software Foundation (fsf.org)."
> > 
> > We have other licenses in our grimoires and only binary-only and
> > distribution-limiting licenses make it into z-rejected. If "distribution" 
> > only
> > applies to our ISO, we still include non-GPL software (some drivers, 
> > packages,
> > etc.) that are not GPL.
> 
> Shouldnt binary-only things be moved to the z-rejected grimoire? I dont
> think they should've been in the regular grimoire to begin with.
> 
> > 
> > Should we remove that line or reword it to say, "and all of the software
> > required to use our distribution will be licensed under the GPL."?
> > 
> We could it to say that the software packages included in our main
> grimoires is gpl compatible or something like that.
 
That won't work unless we move _lots_ of spells out of the main
grimoire. The Apache 2.0 license isn't gpl compatible, same for xfree
4.4 and quite some others.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org