On May 10, 2007, "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 18:07 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> On May 9, 2007, "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 20:33 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> >> Another possibility is that of restrictive patent licenses, and the >> >> recent creative patent agreements we recently learned about, such as >> >> that between Microsoft and Novell. >> > Restrictive patent licenses don't qualify for Fedora as is. >> Excellent. Where's that stated? > It is implicit in the "only licenses approved by the FSF or OSI are OK > for Fedora". I'm afraid it isn't. AFAIK GPLv3 will be the first Free Software license to stop the kind of practice I'm alluding to. > Unless you think that the FSF or the OSI have approved any restrictive > patent licenses... No, but they have approved licenses that don't stop involved parties from colluding to deny users their freedoms through patent agreements and restrictive patent licenses, which effectively renders the software non-Free for its recipients. >> >> Yet another possibility would be trademark agreements that effectively >> >> limited Fedora users' freedoms. >> > Trademark or patent agreements are a board issue, but I can't see the >> > board agreeing to those sorts of things. FWIW, I misunderstood what you wrote. I seemed to me that you were saying the board wouldn't agree to making a public commitment not to accept such agreements, rather than what I now think you meant, that the board wouldn't accept such agreements. Right? >> What sorts of things exactly? It depends on what you understand by >> "limiting users' freedoms." Requiring certain images to be removed, >> for example, doesn't. Howver, requiring them to be replaced to keep >> the software functional, and having lots and lots of them, would turn >> the replacement into an unsurmountable work, which would effectively >> limit the freedoms. What do you think the board would disagree with? > I don't think the Fedora Board would make any trademark or patent > agreements that would limit user freedoms. Then I guess the board might be willing to make clear its unwillingness to accept such agreements, no? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
