Raul Miller wrote: [ ... ]
> Debian tries to maintain a good relationship with the upstream authors. > We ask for permission to distribute code, and if it's clearly granted, > and we have a maintainer who wants to maintain the code we distribute it. > > If we don't have clear permission, then good taste demands that we don't > distribute it. > > Most of the time this has worked rather well for us. But, somehow, > people are >>offended<< that Debian isn't distributing KDE. To be fair, people were offended by the Debian statement that distributing KDE is unlawful and to a lesser extent by the tirades offered by *some* Debian developers. Each distribution obviously makes its own choices on what to distribute. > I guess the primary problem is that there are authors of KDE software > who very clearly have not granted permission to distribute while there > are other authors who very clearly have. > > That's isn't really a legal issue. There is a legal issue, but: > > Debian is not obligated to distribute KDE. Agreed, except to the extent Debian has the self-imposed obligation to supply its users with the best Open Source software packages :-). > As always, it looks like progress is being made towards where Debian > might be able to distribute KDE. > > Personally, I think that we should be distributing KDE as long as we have > > (1) users who want it I think the success of Stormix Linux and Corel Linux prove that a huge demand exists for KDE with Debian. > (2) a maintainer who is interested in supporting it, and I think Ivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> has been maintaining KDE packages for potato and slink, and has made them available at ftp://ftp.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/1.1.2/distribution/deb/, and I believe http://ftp.workspot.com/pub/kde/debian/. I also think Aaron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> has been involved. Other people that might be interested include Bernd and Russell. If none of these gentlemen is willing and able I am quite confident a cross-post on debian-devel and kde-devel will turn up someone who is. > (3) real permission to distribute from the authors. I do not quite know what you mean by this, but if you mean that to conform to your practice noted above of confirming from package authors that packages can be distributed by Debian, I will see if I can get the core KDE developers to send you their approval that you distribute KDE code. Mail me privately please if you think it is worth any effort and I will get started on it. > At the moment, 2 and 3 both look like problems. Easily solved ones. Are there no other obstacles? Ciao, Andreas
