On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:46:10 +0200, Markus Schöpflin
Huh, boost is not free software? AFAICT, the license allows all the four freedoms. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for a list of those. So why should boost not fall into the category of free software?
Hi Markus, not sure whether you replied after or before my auto-followup :-) In any case, yes, it allows all four freedoms and thus qualify, by definition. However it also allows the freedom to "remove freedom" on a specific derivative work: it is non-copylefted free software. This can be seen as "it gives more freedom", as Brian suggests, or "it doesn't preserve freedom", according to one's one beliefs and/or logic. As a matter of fact, that allows cases such as X11, which has non-free versions being the only ones that work on some hardware (making it non-free for users of that hardware). -- [ Gennaro Prota, C++ developer for hire ]