Re: reiser4 non-free?

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:

> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>> Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
>
>>> A: No, credits describe the contribution made to a project. Ads
>>> describe a product someone wants you to buy. Ads are not the same as
>>> credits, and their preservation is not protected by this license.
>>
>> Debian's going to have to look really, really closely at every release
>> of every piece of software under this license, then, and risk an
>> argument -- in a courtroom -- with a copyright holder who considers
>> some line to be a credit, or insufficiently prominent in its modified
>> form.
>
> Fuzzy lines in a license are not a new thing.  Debian isn't in the
> litigation business, so we're not going to be trying to push the
> boundaries anyway.  Respecting the wishes of the author/licensor is a
> policy of ours -- remember the pine business.
>
>>> Q: What in this license prevents persons from making their name
>>> display excessively annoyingly throughout the running of the program?
>>> Isn't that a flaw in the license?
>>>
>>> A: The shovel doesn't stop the digger from creating a pit in the road
>>> that endangers other people. The license is a tool. Whether you make
>>> an ass out of yourself using it on the software you write is up to
>>> you. No compiler makes broken programs work....
>>
>> In other words, some works under this license are free (for example,
>> one containing no credits but the copyright notice) and others are
>> non-free.
>
> Wouldn't such a work still be non-free?  At the least, it definitely
> goes much farther than the analogous clause in the GPL.  You can't
> include code (even optionally executed code) to suppress it, for
> example.

If there are no credits, the prohibition on removing credits is null.

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu