On Friday, March 13, 2015 02:32:30 PM John C Klensin wrote: > --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... There are approximately as many visions of what FOSS is as there are people involved in it, so almost any generalization is inherently an over generalization. It is OK (at least in the FOSS contexts with which I'm most familiar) to require renaming if something is modified. Such a requirement allows concerns about misrepresentations to be mitigated. > > 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). If you look at what changed with the final version the change in paragraph b from "to make, reproduce, publish and distribute modifications of the Template Text (e.g., to insert specific information in place of blanks or place- holders), and reproduce, modify and distribute such modified Template Text." to "insert specific information in place of blanks or place-holders in the Template Text, and to reproduce, publish and distribute the Template Text combined with such insertions." it's very clear that modifications to the template text are not meant to be allowed. > 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. More precisely it prevents the template itself from being included in the FOSS software and having the combined work be considered Free. Writing the software to work without having the template immediately available isn't as you suggest, impossible, but it's substantially complicating. Further, it's a complication that serves no purpose. As I read it, the template text isn't modifiable at all. Scott K