On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 12:20:55PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 05:39:53PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote: > > On 2004-03-05 15:53:13 +0000 Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > > >Yeah, but wasn't one of the argument of dropping non-free the fact > > >that > > >that would put pressure on upstreams of non-free packages to change > > >their licence. [...] > > > > Not one of mine. I'm not sure what effect it has on that, but I > > suspect a net zero. Maybe someone else will discuss that with you. > > I forget who said it first, but I believe it went: > > "Having software in non-free encourages the authors to change their > licenses" > > "The opposite is at least as likely" > > [I don't think it has any real effect, either; I find both > possibilities to be unlikely to the point of absurdity]
Well, the example of the ocaml package showed that the first point is true. And i know what i speak from, i lived it first hand, as i took over the non-free ocaml package in 98, and have participated in gradually removing all burdens that were keeping it in non-free as time pased. And not always thanks to debian-legal, which wanted me to go to upstream about the QPLed emacs .el issue with the argument of : "we should be polite to RMS". Friendly, Sven Luther