João Miguel Neves wrote:
On 18 Aug 2001 18:38:16 +0200, Loic Dachary wrote:
This sentence allows the following scenario:
- you make modifications
- you assign copyright to MITRE
- MITRE releases your modifications under a non free software license and publish them on their web site
- you are not allowed to use your own code
- you have to remove your own modifications from your machine
I know this is unlikely but it's permitted by the license. Therefore the freedom to modify the software is crippled, hence the license is not Free Software.
Do you see any flaw in this logic ?
The license is free software, just like the BSD license (without the advertising clause). What it does not do is to enforce that the future versions of the software will stay free software, but neither does GPL. If the FSF ever is taken over all the GNU project could be transformed into proprietary software because the GNU project has a similar clause: all the software must have its copyright assigned to the FSF.
This is not really true. * It's not true that all GNU projects _must_ have copyright assigned to FSF. However, you are asked to do so, and it's a good choice to do so if you want your software to be incorporated into the official GNU system. * You may make modifications on GPL'ed software without assigning copyright of your modifications to anybody, as long as your modifications are not part of the main development thread. * When you assign copyright to the FSF, the FSF guarantees that the FSF will distribute the software only under licenses that permit free redistribution (paragraph 4 of the usual contract). So even in the case of a "takeover" your software can't be made proprietary. * Apart from that, even when you assign copyright to the FSF you are granted back "non-exclusive, royalty-free and non-cancellable rights to use the Works as you see fit".
At least this is my understanding.
Thanks,