usbdos license

[fritz.mueller]

Hi,
at Gitlab, see: https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/drivers/usbdos/-/issues/2 cardpuncher published the following question:

Hi,
Just noticed, thanks to Willi, that the license of USBDOS makes the package non-free. More specifically, on page 6 of https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/drivers/usbd ... BINTRO.DOC one can read "You also cannot distribute the programs, documentation, or source code and charge (even indirectly) for their distribution." But as stated on https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html "If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on."
This may be a problem for the OEMs like HP that sell computers with FreeDOS. I'd say let's hope Bret would agree to a "standard" free software license, but until then, can this be included?

As I (Willi) just work on FreeDOS help - more than twenty help files, this question is interesting for me too. Could you please check this, and, if necessary, correct the license?

Thank you very much.

[Bret]

I've been having trouble for awhile, and still am to some degree, with my host provider and this forum. Hopefully the major problems are resolved -- we'll see.

Anyway, regarding the licemse, I realize that according to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), my programs are not considered "free". I very much disagree with their definition of "free". According to the FreeDOS rules, programs can either be free (as defined by the FSF) or Open Source, and mine are definitely open source. I also consider mine to be free even though the FSF does not.

FSF and others of similar ilk have used an analogy in the past (and maybe still do), one of "Freedom of Speech vs. Free Beer." According FSF, "free" correlates to "Freedom of Speech", but "Free Beer" is not considered "free". What this means in terms of software is that you are "free" to do whatever you want with someone else's software, including selling it and/or making it proprietary, which to me means the FSF thinks "you are free to take something that someone else gave you for free and make it no longer free." That's no OK with me.

In the past, I've used a "home grown" license just to try and avoid the headaches that come with "official" licensing, but may change that in the future. I'm considering using the Reciprocal Public License (RPL) since it is the closest thing I've found that correlates to my philosophy. Unless somebody can do some fancy talking, I'm not going to convert to any licensing the FSF considers "free".