date: 2004-02-17 12:12:30 +0000;  author: rms;  state: Exp;  lines: +17 -1;
Talk about implications of basing a free software license on a contract.


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<P>
Most free software licenses are based on copyright, and there are
limits on what kinds of requirements can be imposed through copyright.
If a copyright-based license respects freedom in the ways described
above, it is unlikely to have some other sort of problem that we never
anticipated (though this does happen occasionally).  However, some
free software licenses are based on contracts, and contracts can
impose a much larger range of possible restrictions.  That means there
are many possible ways such a license could be unacceptably
restrictive and non-free.
<P>
We can't possibly list all the possible contract restrictions that
would be unacceptable.  If a contract-based license restricts the user
in an unusual way that copyright-based licenses cannot, and which
isn't mentioned here as legitimate, we will have to think about it,
and we will probably decide it is non-free.
<P>
When talking about free software, it is best to avoid using terms like
``give away'' or ``for free'', because those terms imply that the
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Updated:
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$Date: 2026/01/28 17:24:09 $ $Author: ineiev $
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