LWN about EU FP6 and our recommendation

[Bernhard Reiter]

LWN mentioned the FSFE recommendation about Free Software
in the 6th FP on the mainpage.

	http://lwn.net/2002/0502/

They seem to agree with most of it, but:

	"Additional positive scores in the evaluation process should be
	granted to projects employing ``Copylefted'' Free Software and
	projects taking steps to ensure the enduring availability and legal
	maintainability of the Free Software created through copyright
	assignments to appropriate institutions."

	LWN has often pointed out the benefits of the GPL. But this sort of
	attempt to create governmental preferences for a specific software
	license could well be self-defeating. Reasonable people - all of
	whom support free software - can and often do disagree over software
	licenses. This recommendation looks like an attempt by one group to
	grab preferential treatment over the others. Is it not enough that
	the resulting software be free? 

If there is a concept to protect the freedom of the software,
this would certainly be possible.

Of course less freedom protecting licenses (like the LGPL) can be
a good thing under rare circumstances. Still I cannot see why
rewarding having thoughts about protection of the freedom can 
be a bad recommendation in the eyes of the LWN editor...
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