(-www should please cc me in reply - MFT is set.) Frank Lichtenheld said on Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 03:49:34AM +0200,:
> As some of you might have known/noticed, Andreas Barth and I worked > on a way to present the findings of debian-legal on the Debian > website. <snip> > You can find these pages on http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ Good effort. But ... 1. where should somebody go to if (s)he wants to check if the FOO license is DFSG compliant? Obviously, licenses which were in Debian for ever (like the GNU GPL) will not be mentioned in these pages. 2. When I was new to Debian, I used to look for a page which contained some info like what has been put up, and I certainly will appreciate if the following suggestions are implemented. Few lines at the top of the present page will help. Something like:- There has been a plethora of licenses claiming to be `free' and 'open-source'. This proliferation has been causing confusion to developers and users alike. While there is no rule like `all packages license FOO' are eligible to be included in Debian', The license under which a package is released is certainly considered by Debian while deciding whether a package is eligible to be included in the Debian archives. Debian's policy about including packages can be found (link to www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html) here. These site presents the opinion of the Debian project on how certain licenses .... etc. (the present body) (then, at the end) Certain copyright holders however choose to place additional restrictions, or strange interpretations on their licenses. Some authors actually provide clarifications to licenses, permitting what would not be allowed by the plain test of the license. Hence, merely the fact that a <b>license</b> meets the DFSG does not assure inclusion of a package in Debian. In other words, not only the license, but also the software, its dependencies, and authors'/ copyright holders' interpretation of the license, all should comply with the Debian Free <b>Software</b> Guidelines. /legal, /licenses/ or /copyright is the place where people will look for this info. So, obviously above is to be included somewhere in there. Ps:- I am not a DD. -- +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M., 'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road, Ernakulam, Cochin-682018, Kerala, India. http://paivakil.port5.com +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+