--On Friday, March 13, 2015 11:57 -0400 Scott Kitterman
<scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>...
> "as long as the version of the template in the application is
> an exact copy" is the problem. Freedom to modify is a
> fundamental principle of free and open source software.
Scott, I think that is an overgeneralization and a risk, but one
that is actually not relevant to what I see as the issue here.
I don't believe that anyone would seriously claim that the right
to misrepresent is a fundamental principle of FOSS or anything
else attractive. So...
> It's
> OK from a FOSS perspective to say "If you change it, you have
> to call it something else" to avoid confusion, but it has to
> be legally modifiable.
First of all, "use but acknowledge (and, by the way, don't
misrepresent)" is exactly what I believe is allowed under
existing rules. If you, Sam, or others believe that existing
rules and/or the new template rules don't allow that, then I'm
in agreement with you that needs to be explicit in the template
rules (and, btw, for most uses of RFC text of other sorts).
Beyond that, if the rule says something equivalent to "copy
without modification other than providing for filling in
blanks", that doesn't prevent writing FOSS software that does
just that, nor does it prevent writing FOSS software that
supports filling in of templates. I can imagine several ways in
which it would make such software less attractive than one might
optimally like. If I believed your assertion in its broadest
form, I can imagine how the rule would offend someone's moral
sense and thereby cause them to decide to spend time in other
ways that writing such software. But I'm unpersuaded that it
_prevents_ someone from writing such software.
best,
john