[OpenISO] free software tools policy (was Re: Core...)

[Norbert Bollow]

Michael Rasmussen <michael at rasmussen.cc> wrote:

> > ## Commitment to Free Software ##
> > 
> > The software which OpenISO.org will use must be "open" publicly
> > available Free Software.  The reason for this is as follows: When
> > 
> 1) I sincerely do not understand this term: "open" publicly available
> Free Software when the subject is Free Software.

Yes, that sentence is obviously buggy.  I believe it's derives from an
email that I posted here not too long ago (and I think the text in
that email was coherent enough) but I messed it up when editing it for
that draft document.

> Why not make it a more court clean statement: The software which
> OpenISO.org will use must be released under a license which is
> compatible with the GNU GPL - a free software license - and it must be
> publicly available . Qualified licenses are listed on this url:
> http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/.

As mentioned in another post on this topic, the free software tools
policy is not central to OpenISO.org's mission, and will be moved
out of the "Core Policies" document to another document dealing
specifically with policy regarding software tools for practical use 
in OpenISO.org's work.

Nevertheless, I do think that the proposed formulation above is
also buggy, because not every GPL-compatible license guarantees
that a program is Free Software.  (In fact it seems that Novell
and Microsoft have found a loophole in GPLv2 to the effect that
not even GPLv2 really guarantees this.)  The "GPL compatible license"
property guarantees only that the license itself does not prevent
the program from being Free Software.  It is possible for Microsoft
to have a patent on some idea and grant permission to distribute
software implementing that idea only to Novell.  Then Novell can
distribute software implementing the idea under a GPL-compatible
copyright license but it isn't free software because in order to
further redistribute also a patent license from Microsoft would be
needed.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org