Re: Is admin/unidata/copyright.html a free software license?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 12:42:17 +0200
> 
> [I'd have expected a previous discussion on this, but I failed to find
> one in the archives of this mailing list. Sorry if this is a duplicate.]
> 
> File admin/unidata/copyright.html (also at [1]) contains the "Unicode
> Terms of Use" which say in section H.2:
> 
> | Unicode, Inc. shall have the right to modify this Agreement at any
> | time by posting it to this website.
> 
> This allows the copyright holder to unilaterally revoke the freedoms,
> which I believe fails the free software definition [2]:
> 
> "In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be permanent and
> irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the
> software has the power to revoke the license, or retroactively add
> restrictions to its terms, without your doing anything wrong to give
> cause, the software is not free."

This was indeed discussed, and the conclusion was that it's okay for
us to distribute these files, and to distribute data based on those
files as part of Emacs.

Other Free Software packages do the same.  Example: HarfBuzz.

As to their reserved rights to change the conditions: when they do (if
they ever do), we will reassess this issue.

> IMHO it also fails Debian's "Tentacles of Evil" test [3] which says:
> 
> "To be free, the license cannot allow even the author to take away the
> required freedoms."

We are not part of Debian, so not bound by their policies, such as
they are.

> I am also surprised that these lists in admin/unidata/ or, in general,
> a character set can be copyrightable. (For example, everyone uses ASCII
> without thinking about copyright of the underlying ANSI X3.4 standard.
> The same applies to several much larger CJK character sets.)

So therefore why are you raising this non-issue, from your POV?