On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 10:16:31PM +0200, Joerg Jaspert wrote: > On 10614 March 1977, Ian Jackson wrote:
> >> In the face of such an aggressive upstream author with strong and > >> controversial opinions about the GPL, forking may be a difficult > >> option. Complete removal from Debian might be a better option, but I'd > >> like some other opinions on this before we go to such lengths. > > IMO if we can fork it and remain confident of (a) our legal standing > > and (b) out ability to maintain the code then we should probably do > > so. > > What's the state of the alternatives to cdrecord ? > You wont find something that can replace it. > You may be able to find stuff that can replace it in some parts. But try > to find something that can replace mkisofs - you wont be able to have > something like it, with the same support for so many different > needs. Similar for cdrecord. Easiest is cdda2wav. :) It's my understanding that Joerg Schilling is not the original author of mkisofs, and is definitely not the exclusive copyright holder. If earlier contributors released their work under the GPL, I'm not the least bit worried about Joerg suppressing a fork. The hard one is definitely cdrecord, which seems to be largely Joerg's work. While it is purportedly released under the GPL, he seems to have no qualms about threatening to sue people that he disagrees with, and if there are no other copyright holders on cdrecord we don't have the safeguard of knowing he's exposing himself to legal liability if he interferes with our exercise of GPL-granted rights. As far as not being able to fully replace cdrtools, though, freedom is not always convenient; and we have promised that Debian will remain free. If we have to excise his code from Debian, it's pretty clear that it will be a while before CD burning is again as convenient as it is today, but I don't see that it's avoidable if the copyright holder is not acting in good faith towards distributions he takes a personal dislike to. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/
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