[Bf-docboard] OCL vs FDL

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

I think the big misunderstanding is in what 'selling' means.
The traditional way of selling means transferring ownership, or granting 
a license to get a certain right to use.

Both GNU GPL and OCL are not about that type of sales. You can put OCL 
at a CDROM freely, make a million copies and charge for it what you like 
to. You should also read the OCL. It only states this:

"You may not charge a fee for the OC itself"

Explain to me, how you can ever 'sell' the Blender GPL-ed sources? You 
can't. The GNU GPL license simply excludes that.

Here's what the FSF says about it themselves:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

A quote:

"we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' 
and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say 
``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous. "

-Ton-


Felix Rabe wrote:
> Hi Ton.
> 
> On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 15:32:45 +0100
> Ton Roosendaal <ton@blender.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Yes, this is a clear FSF requirement.
>>However, the fact that you are allowed to 'sell' GNU GPL code itself is 
>>not very useful. You can only do that within the GPL license; allowing 
>>the purchaser to give it all away without charge.
> 
> 
> The right to sell your clothes after you wore them for a while is also
> not very useful to most people (most of them give them away gratis to
> relatives or into a "collection" for houseless people), but you will
> surely get a very negative response if you wanted to push a law
> forbidding people to sell their clothes.
> 
> You seem to be opposed to a freedom that can do no harm to you if
> enabled by the doc license.
> 
> 
>>Then what's the value of selling something that you allow anyone to give 
>>away for free? I think that specific "freedom" is pretty useless, except 
>>for the original creator (=copyright holder), who can do this anyway 
>>because he owns it.
> 
> 
> See above.
> 
> 
>>Apart from this issue, the OCL has a lot of freedom built-in, and is 
>>copylefted as well. The designers of the OCL wanted to devise a license 
>>that could accompany the GNU GPL for non-coding projects.
>>I don't understand why they didnt start the discussion with FSF on this. 
>>It could have been easily solved by changing the wording a bit I guess.
> 
> 
> No problem if there would be a OCL 2 (or similar) in the foreseeable
> future that would make it free in that regard.
> 
> 
>>Why not turn around the challenge, and prove to us in what way OCL would 
>>limit our (and your) freedom, and why that isn't acceptable?
> 
> 
> I did that already, but I will give you more details (examples) on that:
> 
> If I cannot sell the Blender documentation, I would loose a lot of money
> if I wanted to distribute a large amount of CD-ROM's containing Blender
> documentation (either alone or along whatever-you-can-think-of,
> including GNU/Linux distributions), since I would have to give them away
> gratis.  (I cannot charge for _anything_ on the disc, since it could be
> seen as charging for the Blender doc.  Especially since at the end, it
> really does not matter what you charged for - I got money, and the
> Blender docs were involved somehow.)
> 
> Your limiting of this freedom therefore harms me.
> 
> Likewise it would harm reputation, since no GNU/Linux distributor would
> be able to include the Blender documentation - only Blender.  Just think
> of the Debian community being angry at us because the blender-doc
> package isn't in the main branch...
> 
> 
>>Although I respect the goals of the FSF to create a 100% 'Free' system, 
>>it's not the goal of the BF, nor the incentive of most people who will 
>>contribute to its projects.
> 
> 
> But we should also not work against it if there are no important
> reasons.  (The 'we' would in that case, again, become 'you', since I
> wouldn't do it myself.)
> 
> 
>>I made the copyright statement to react to something Stefano said 
>>before, that people will transfer copyright to the BF. That's not a 
>>correct statement according to me. Not with OCL, BAL, FDL, or whatever 
>>license we will choose.
> 
> 
> The problem with copyright is that if you have an open community (such
> as the developer community around Blender), you must make a big equal
> sign between licensor (correct word?) and licensee.  I seem to have a
> blackout now, so I cannot elaborate on it - I hope you saw where I was
> pointing at :).
> 
> cu,
> Felix
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-- 
_____________________________________________________
Ton Roosendaal | ton@blender.org | Blender Foundation
Amsterdam | The Netherlands |  http://www.blender.org