Comment 7 for bug 769874

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Margarita Manterola (marga) wrote :

This was debated today for a number of hours on IRC, and we were requested to post comments here, so I'm doing it but only as a DD, not on behalf of Debian or anything like that, I hope you find this helpful.

The DFSG allows an author to require a name change when certain program is changed. It *doesn't* allow the author to say how the name should be changed, and most importantly, it *doesn't* allow the author to _PREVENT_ name changing.

Thus, the license should not prevent name changing for it to be considered free. As was suggested on IRC, replacing a must with a should on 2a) and 2c) might be enough for this.

The clarification of what is and what isn't a substantially changed version (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-licence/+bug/655096) should also be addressed. Maybe changing the name is already a substantial change, thus allowing name changing without any further modification to the license?

BTW, I fail to see how this bug could be invalid. Naming restrictions *are* considered non-free. And will be considered non-free until fixed. How is this an invalid bug?

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Regards,
Marga