Here a follow-up of my correspondence with Philip Brown, the upstream maintainer of kdrill. Phil want to distribute kdrill under a modified Artistic licence and his main concern is about redistribution of modified binaries. It seems to me a kind of "configuration is ok, but I want to control any other modifications".
Phil is quite a good guy, but my english don't allow me to help him much about this issue (I'm never sure if I say it right even if I understand quite well). So, can you send me some suggestions based on what you understand about it. I'll make a resume and forward it to him. Personal notes I just added are mark with FN:> Sorry if this make some confusion but I'm stuck with IMP who don't have much editing capability (or should I say Netscape?) ;) ----- Message restransmis par Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 16:57:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Philip Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: kdrill SKIP bug To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ Fabien Ninoles writes ] [snip this part about an unknown bug] > > So, the distribution clause might be modified to be something like: > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > You may redistribute kdrill in any of the following ways: > > > > a) A binary-only compilation of an unmodified distribution from > > ftp.bolthole.com > > [You must provide a noticable pointer that source code is > > on ftp.bolthole.com] > > > > b) full source code [binaries optional] > > You may chose to provide source modifications, and binaries based > > on those modifications. However, the original > > source distribution must be present, in its entirety. > > > > c) a set of patches to an unmodified distribution. > > [you do not have to provide the distribution, just a pointer > > to the ftp site] > > Sorry, I can make myself a clear idea of what this implied. My english > is not good enough for such thing. Can I forward this again to debian-legal? I'm tempted to abuse you with my french :-) but the license is in english, so that might cause problems. If you want to forward it, go ahead. But I think we are already okay. See below... FN:> The following lines are part of some explanations about the way we FN:> provide the pristine source. The four files mentions are the .deb, FN:> the orig.tar.gz, the .dsc and the .diff.gz. > We always provided all those four files. However, often the users just > want the binaries and don't want to paid for the extra 2 CD who included > it. So, for commodity, we ask the author to let us (and everybody else > because Debian is an open movement who can't discriminate), to distribute > modified binaries separately from the source, as long as we provided both > the pristine source and the patches to the modified version from our > ftp sites. It doesn't sound like you are really making "modified binaries". You're only tweaking the configs, which is fine by me. All you have to do is install the appropriate KDrill resource file, and all the paths are set up however you like. I don't consider that to be "modifying the binaries". I can put that explicitly in the license, if you like. If all this sounds like it is okay, then I will draft a new version of the kdrill license, and you can then forward that whole thing to debian legal. ça suffit? FN:> I also ensure myself that the way we work is ok. A kind of polite FN:> diplomacy ;) > And, finally, > the Debian Bug Tracking System made me the first receiver of the bugs > from the Debian KDrill pacakge, so I can filter the bugs coming from > my packaging (fonts or libraries dependencies, and custom location) > and forward you the program bugs (like SKIP, if even one of the > Debian users got one). That's the way I'm used to work in Debian. That sounds okay to me. > OTOH, I have some difficulty to see want you want... For me, the GPL > protects both my Copyright and my Code. The GPL don't allow people to > "freely" modify your code and distribute without notice: >... FN:> I will try to make this part clearer to Phil. My point is that GPL FN:> don't allow you to distribute it freely without forwarding to the FN:> maintainer. It's may be a bad habits among the community but it's FN:> not permit explicitely in the GPL, AFAIK. Am I right about this? well, for starters, I'm glad we had our chat about "modified binaries". If I had the GPL, you could have tweaked things strangely, and just shipped it. I WANT to be involved in that stuff, so I can encourage the proper way to adjust it. some of the other stuff you mentioned will problably encourage me to look at the GPL again. But the other thing I don't like about it, is that it's just too durn long :-) FN:> Here he is right ;-) Someone as a good resume (mainly a bare-naked GPL FN:> with all it's political speach removed) of the GPL around? [snip last part altough it contains some good comments about Debian ;)] ----- Fin de message retransmis ----- Thanks a lot, ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fabien Ninoles Chevalier servant de la Dame Catherine des Rosiers aka Corbeau aka le Veneur Debian GNU/Linux maintainer E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WebPage: http://www.tzone.org/~fabien RSA PGP KEY [E3723845]: 1C C1 4F A6 EE E5 4D 99 4F 80 2D 2D 1F 85 C1 70 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
