Dear list readers,
A package I put on review can utilize dxflib: http://www.qcad.org/dxflib_downloads.html
This license file ships in the tarball:
http://www.geofrogger.net/review/dxflib_commercial_license.txt
What looks like a proprietary license, is suddenly interupted by:
"NOTE: dxflib Open Source Edition is licensed under the terms of the GPL and not under this Agreement. If Licensee has, at any time, developed all (or any portions of) the Application(s) using RibbonSoft's publicly licensed dxflib Open Source Edition, Licensee must comply with RibbonSoft's requirements and license such Application(s) (or any portions derived there from) under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License version 2 (the "GPL") a copy of which is located at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html#SEC1
..."
The headers in the various file mention GPLv2. With all the rubble in the license, around mentioning it was GPLv2, is this certainly free software?
Thanks in advance,
Volker Fröhlich
On 10/17/2011 03:07 PM, Volker Fröhlich wrote:
The headers in the various file mention GPLv2. With all the rubble in the license, around mentioning it was GPLv2, is this certainly free software?
No, this license mess is non-free. In it, it says:
"and the GPL-based source code must be made available upon request"
A free software license cannot force a user to distribute source code except in limited circumstances (when a corresponding binary is distributed, or deployed as a network service). See the FSF's comments on the original nonfree Apple Public Source License: https://gnu.org/philosophy/historical-apsl.html
There are other areas that make this beast non-free, but this is perhaps the most glaring.
~tom
== Fedora Project
Dear Tom!
The sentence you quoted, tries to briefly explain the GPL, and obviously fails to do so accurately. Though they state before, the GPLv2 applies.
I'm curious: Would you regard it free if this sentence were not there?
Volker
Am Dienstag, 18. Oktober 2011, 16:13:17 schrieb Tom Callaway:
On 10/17/2011 03:07 PM, Volker Fröhlich wrote:
The headers in the various file mention GPLv2. With all the rubble in the license, around mentioning it was GPLv2, is this certainly free software?
No, this license mess is non-free. In it, it says:
"and the GPL-based source code must be made available upon request"
A free software license cannot force a user to distribute source code except in limited circumstances (when a corresponding binary is distributed, or deployed as a network service). See the FSF's comments on the original nonfree Apple Public Source License: https://gnu.org/philosophy/historical-apsl.html
There are other areas that make this beast non-free, but this is perhaps the most glaring.
~tom
== Fedora Project
On 10/30/2011 04:35 PM, Volker Fröhlich wrote:
The sentence you quoted, tries to briefly explain the GPL, and obviously fails to do so accurately. Though they state before, the GPLv2 applies.
I'm curious: Would you regard it free if this sentence were not there?
Probably not. This was just the most obvious reason, the license is poorly worded. If upstream is interested, I might be able to suggest changes that would make it free.
This isn't actually an unheard of problem, where the license attempts to explain the GPL (and fails, causing restrictions and/or non-free state to become the actual license) as opposed to simply saying "This software is licensed under the GPLv2."
~tom
== Fedora Project
-
Tom Callaway -
Volker Fröhlich