[POLITICAL] Re: [Fribidi-discuss] License question to the project owners

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 03:00:54PM +0300, Omer Zak wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Paulo Soares wrote:
> 
> > My problems start with the dual licensing of iText. Either I say somewhere
> > that if you want Arabic without using awt you are restricted to LGPL or, and
> > that's my request, I get some kind of exception from you for this partial
> > port to java and the MPL/LGPL license can still be applied even for the
> > fribidi part.
> 
> My position, as a (minor) contributor to FriBidi development:
> I require that my contributions to FriBidi continue to be singly-licensed
> under the LGPL, and I don't accept MPL as an alternative license.
> 
> One of my concerns about MPL is clause 4 - "Inability to Comply Due to
> Statute or Regulation", which allows the software to be distributed in
> countries, whose laws override provisions of the MPL.

Well, if the the software license requires you to take an illegal
action, then it is an illegal contract, right?

> 
> Given the current state of enmity between Arabic-speaking countries and
> Hebrew-speaking countries in the world, such a loophole might be used by
> fanatic contributors to prohibit use of their technically sound
> contribution with text in one of the above languages, if the laws of their
> country support such a prohibition.

US export regulation are probably a better test case, as they prevent
free distribution.

Anyway, there may be other problematic points in fribidi. But I'll leave
this to the copyright holders to decide.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:tzafrir at technion.ac.il       +---------------------------+