[H-GEN] Queries

[Anthony Towns]

On Sun, Mar 15, 1998 at 02:09:49AM +0000, Frank Brand wrote:

> 2. NETSCAPE FREE
> I see many references to Netscape noe being free. However, my
> understanding is that "free" means that the source is freely available,
> not that there is no licencing fee for etscape 4.

>From the Open Source Definition:

``1. Free Redistribution

The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the
software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing
programs from several different sources. The license may not require a
royalty or fee for such sale.''

..and..

``6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavour

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
specific field of endeavour. For example, it may not restrict the program
from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.''

So Open Source software can be used by businesses or government or whoever
at no cost. (more or less)

> If anyone has an
> authoritative reference to Netscape bing $FREE not just SOURCE_FREE (for
> non-academic, non-government, non-charitable institutions - ie
> uq.net.au), I would appreciate such information.

In particular, the Netscape Public License (NPL, see 
http://www.mozilla.org/NPL/) states ``The Initial Developer [Netscape,Inc.]
hereby grants, a world-wide, royalty-free, ... license to use, reproduce,
modify, ..., and distribute the Original Code either as Original Code, with
or without Modifications, or as a Larger Work [eg value added type system].''

It does add some restrictions though, that are probably worth mentioning.

First, it /doesn't/ give people rights to use the name "Netscape" or the
little "N" logo -- we're not getting a free /Netscape/, we're getting a
new improved version of Mozilla that includes all the bits it can of
Netscape. 

Presumably, Netscape,Inc. will be keeping Netscape(tm) as their own
product in a similar way to RedHat.

Also, Netscape /can/ make up different licenses for their own code --
they can build a Netscape-II product based on their current sources
and not NPL that. By my reading they /can/ just incorporate changes
made by the free software community. I don't /think/ they can do
so in any way which particularly disadvantages us, though.

They also include a section for modifications to the license -- they'll
increment the version number each time (we're at 0.90 now) and new
versions ``will be similar in spirit to this license'', but, unlike the
GPL they will, by my reading, override the prior versions. This initially
struck me as different to the GPL, which recommends you use a phrase
such as "This is made available under GPL version 2.0 or at your option
any later version.", and specifically states that if you just say "This
is GPLed", you can use any version of the GPL you like. But when I
actually looked through some of the /usr/doc/*/copyright files on my
system, they tended to either just give a version number (with no "at
your option") or to say "the latest version of the GPL".

The other interesting thing is that the do give permission for people
to impose weird licesense on executables they distribute -- you still
have to provide source, but you can forbid people from redistributing
the executable. I can't think of any good reasons for it, and the 
annotations Netscape provides don't exactly make it any clearer...

As always, IANAL, and I haven't even spent all that much time looking
over Netscape's License, so take everything above with enough salt to
do serious damage to your health.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

      ``It's not a vision, or a fear. It's just a thought.''
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