Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jeremy Hankins writes (Non-DD's in debian-legal): I'm not sure I understand this part, though. Do you think that folks like myself, who are not DD's, should not participate in the discussions on d-l? Actually, I think they should not participate, in general. I've given this a fair amount of thought. You make some good points, and some of them strike quite close to home for myself, so I clearly have to give them some weight. But I don't think you've got the whole picture here. The arguments that are had on debian-legal about what is an acceptable licence, and what principles these decisions should be based on, are often very political. Political decisions in Debian should be taken by DD's. This is the point that bothers me the most. It's certainly true that licensing decisions are in part political. But it's also the case that they are in part technical. Not in the sense of having to do with technology and computers, but in the sense of hinging upon particular details and specialized knowledge. It is quite possible to get a licensing issue empirically wrong, after all. This came up with the recent GR on the GFDL. There was a bit of discussion on d-l about how to interpret it: was it amending the DFSG, or specifying an interpretation for the GFDL? If it was the first, exactly what was the amendment, and why didn't it say it was amending anything? If it was the latter wasn't it a bit like legislating pi or outlawing the tides: an attempt to fix by legislative fiat something which we have no control over in the first place. In the end I think this was (sort of) resolved by interpreting the GFDL GR as specifying an interpretation, but only for the purposes of the DFSG. (Of course, as a political issue being discussed on d-l, this proves your point.) I'm not trying to re-raise the whole GFDL debate. But I do think it was an example of where Debian could go wrong by treating licensing issues as political issues. In the end, there's a real world out there with real judges and real courts, and we can't act as if they don't exist. It's certainly true that licensing issues are intensely political. And it's probably impossible to disentangle the politics from the technical (factual) issues. And Debian, as an organization, has a right to say that internal politics are internal, and not something for outsiders like myself to be party to. If that's the case, though, political lists should really be taken private, or posting limited to members, or whatever. Personally, I think that one of Debian's strengths is its openness, and willingness to have discussions in front of and with outsiders. Though naturally, I say that as an outsider. Arguments about licences are phrased as if the questions are all clear-cut and right-or-wrong, but actually usually they're matters of interpretation where weight of numbers on one side or another ends up often carrying the day. (`Am I really the only person who thinks this is completely mad?' `No, but all the rest of them are too busy writing software.') If they're busy writing software they're probably not up to speed on the technical/factual issues. So it's a fair question to ask whether their opinion is relevant. In the end that's a variation of the lurkers support me. This is one of the most common accusations leveled against d-l: that the membership of d-l is skewed and not representative of Debian as a whole. If that's true there's not much d-l can do about it, of course, and the whole process of license evaluation should perhaps be rethought. The simplest solution, though, is for those who think d-l skewed to start participating. The situation with non-DD's pontificating about what is and is not an acceptable Free licence is mitigated somewhat by the fact that debian-legal is only a talking shop and doesn't actually decide, but as we've just seen, people (both people from debian-legal and elsewhere) do seem to think that debian-legal is or ought to be where these decisions are taken. I think what's concerning to most (it concerns me) is that people seem to be _avoiding_ d-l, presumably because they see it as invalid or corrupted by weirdos. That's indicative of a serious problem, because it means licensing issues aren't being discussed _at all_. As saddened as I would be if d-l went private, if doing so is the only way to solve that problem it's probably a good idea. Discussions about licensing are different from most other kinds of activity in Debian precisely because they're political and have a very low barrier to entry. Picking up the slack in licence approval (if indeed there is any slack) is not at all like picking up the slack in maintenance of a particular package. To maintain a package you need a clear technical head, a certain minimum time commitment, and the results (good or bad) are clearly visible. Whereas anyone can blow off hot air on a mailing list. You're
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, no, that's not actually true. Debian developers get a say in whatever they're responsible for. Whether that whatever is a bunch of packages on which they're listed as Maintainer, or a port they've been maintaining for a few years, or a programming language for which they maintain an extraordinary amount of packages and have been helping out in shaping a policy for, or some appointed position (as in this case) really isn't all that important. That is a crucial difference between d-l and many other responsibilities in Debian: ultimately, d-l is only advisory. If somebody not involved with the m68k port comes and tells me that some decision I made for m68k is all wrong and that I should've done this or that instead, I'll have a good laugh. And go on with doing whatever I was doing. Which, I think, is what the ftp-masters should do to this thread. That's probably good advice for those of us who contribute to d-l, too. Except for one thing: if there's significant distrust or antipathy directed toward d-l it interferes with our ability to give advice on software freedom issues because people don't listen to us. That, ultimately, is why I posted my original message. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Non-DD's in debian-legal
Disclaimer: I am not a DD, nor in the n-m queue. I'm also re-crossposting to debian-devel, because I don't think this discussion could usefully be had on debian-legal -- and it's not a licensing issue anyway. Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: I don't believe that saying someone isn't a developer is contemptuous. It's very easy to fall under the misapprehension that the views of some participants on debian-legal represent the views of the Debian project as a whole, This statement could, of course, be generalized to refer to any mailing list and any group of participants, and it would still be just as true. If this is a particular problem for d-l it's because people often ask d-l for a definitive judgement on a license, and the list is simply not set up to deliver on that request. There have been a few attempts (summaries, for example), but they never worked well. however, and particularly when that applies to individuals who aren't members of the Debian project, that does a serious disservice to people who are. I'm not sure I understand this part, though. Do you think that folks like myself, who are not DD's, should not participate in the discussions on d-l? Do you think that those of us who are not DD's should put a disclaimer (IANADD) on every message to the list? I can tell you from experience that the latter gets pretty distracting after a while. This is a serious question, btw, because you're pointing to what you evidently consider to be a serious problem, yet you're not suggesting a solution. For whatever reason, this issue seems to be a particular problem for d-l. Every so often someone claims that the results of discussions on d-l aren't valid because d-l is populated by a bunch of non-DD's, or tries to discount someone's argument because that person isn't a DD. Mostly I write that off as sour grapes over being on the losing side of an argument. But when it comes from a duly elected official in the Debian organization, I have to take a step back and wonder what the problem is. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that most DD's, despite occasionally having strong opinions on licensing (*This* license is _free_, @#$^!) are totally uninterested in taking the time to sort through the nitpicking arguments about language, jurisdiction, and law, etc., that are needed to make a decision on a particular license or work. That leaves a vacuum on d-l, where such discussions are supposed to take place. So that leaves those of us who may not be DD's but (by whatever perversion of character) are actually interested in discussing licenses, and motivated to ensure that the quality of the licensing of Debian software remains as high as that of the software itself. We, naturally enough, have helped to fill that vacuum. Unfortunately, licensing issues tend toward flame wars because, as I mentioned before, people tend to have strong opinions without wanting to take the time to ground those opinions in the facts. These flame-fests lead some people to try to find reasons to discount their opponents, and on d-l that reason is often simply that some of the participants are not DD's. So I don't think this problem is going away, nor do I think it's a serious one. After all, if DD's really think licensing issues should be discussed behind closed doors, they're free to pass a GR taking debian-legal private. But if you have a different opinion on the issue, I'd like to hear it. (Note that I am not at all talking about the whole Sun java bit. I personally find it hard to get worked up about non-free software going into non-free. Perhaps legal counsel should have been sought, but that's not my call.) -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Starting with What is key for Debian makes it sound like a policy statement on behalf of Debian, and Just fix the license could then be interpreted as a demand from Debian that Sun alter the license. In that context, it seems reasonable to point out that Walter is not in a position to speak on behalf of Debian. That's entirely reasonable. Perhaps I misinterpreted aj's message somewhat. It seemed to me to be placing rather more emphasis on Walter not being a DD. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
Adeodato Simó [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So let's make an analogy. Imagine one day, the bulk of Debian Developers stop being interested in maintaining GNOME (or KDE, if you wish). The packages begin to rot, become obsolete, uninstallable, etc. Then, a group of non-developers who care about GNOME and, also, care about GNOME being in good shape in Debian, step up and try to help. Absolutely. That's the Debian Way(tm). The thing is that, no matter how much they work and no matter how high quality their packages are, at the end it _HAS_ to be a Debian Developer the one to sign the .changes file. Credit and acknowledgement will go to the non-developers, of course, since they did the work, but a DD has to review and sign it before it is consider oficially part of Debian. That's where the analogy breaks down, though. Analyzing software licensing situations doesn't require upload rights or a key on the developer key-ring. In fact, it doesn't require any developer privileges at all -- unless you count posting on debian mailing lists and occasionally filing bugs as developer privilege. And, if sadly no developer would be interested in uploading those packages, those contributors do not get to create an Alioth project, set up a repository, _and_ tell the world those are the official GNOME packages for Debian. They can create the project, set up the repo, and inform interested parties that they believe those packages are suitable for Debian, that they would like to see them in the official archive, and the reasons why they are in gnome.alioth.debian.org instead of ftp.debian.org. As you'll understand, nobody would like for debian-legal@lists.debian.org to become the gnome.alioth.debian.org in the example above. I'm afraid I don't understand the fear here. What would it mean for d-l to become gnome.alioth.debian.org in your example? -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
Re: GPL and linking
Humberto Massa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ??? Let's try again: All of this discussion of legal minutia misses (and perhaps supports) what, to my mind, is the most compelling argument for accepting the FSF's position on the subject. The fact is that the question does depend on a lot of legal minutia that almost all of us aren't qualified to have an opinion on. So unless it's a make-or-break issue for Debian (which I just don't see), the obvious thing to do is to take the agreeable, safe position. So the question of whether or not the FSF is actually *right* doesn't matter. We should only disagree with them if we have to for the sake of Debian -- in which case we're probably in trouble and should hire a lawyer ASAP. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GPL and linking
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You may not be qualified (as I am not) to offer legal advice. But you're certainly qualified to have an opinion. Sure. But it's not relevant to this discussion -- despite what many of the participants seem to believe. And there isn't necessarily an agreeable, safe position. Are you saying there's not? So who's going to sue me (or Debian) for adopting an overbroad idea of what constitutes a derivative? Hey, you decided to abide by my license terms when you didn't have to. I'm gonna sue! (Standing? What's that?) Conversely, if our idea of what constitutes a derived work is too narrow we could end up violating someone's copyright. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Should this be filed as grave? Gcc-2.95
Matt Zimmerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A more useful question would be, why does gcc-2.95 depend on gcc? The answer, as usual, you could have found for yourself in the changelog: gcc-2.95 (2.95.3.ds3-5) testing unstable; urgency=low * For each binary compiler package xxx-2.95 add a dependency on xxx (= 1:2.95.3-2). Fixes #85135, #85141, #85154, #85222, #85539, #85570, #85578. * Fix typos. Add note about gcc-2.97 to README (fixes #85180). -- Matthias Klose [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon, 12 Feb 2001 01:19:59 +0100 You may refer to all of those bugs for reasons why this is so. I'd love it if someone could explain the problem in a bit more detail for me. I was bitten by this kernel/gcc issue myself, and having looked at those bug reports I'm still not clear what was happening, other than that gcc-2.95 was somehow breaking g++/libstdc++ in testing. Just curious. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
