Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? 'kay, this has already been debated earlier, but let me rephrase it. If some driver depend on *loading* a non-free firmware, i.e. being *totally* useless without, it goes into contrib. Same applies to any software in debian, right ? Mike
Abwesenheitsnotiz: Hi
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren Am 28. Oktober 2004 bin ich wieder im Hause. In dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an Herrn Dr. Strüh Tel.: 07164/930173 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mit freundlichen Grüßen U. Riegert
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The point is, some drivers DO require firmwares. I'd rather say: Some But, as I explained, this is not correct: hardware devices require firmwares, not drivers. -- ciao, Marco
Re: ITP some 13 years old code with unknown license
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Atari game, and he said its OK. Of course I tried to contact der Mouse, but without luck. And since Mouse is widely used in computing, Google didn't return something usefull. You need to know what to look for... der Mouse is well known in some circles. :-) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ciao, Marco
Re: Academic Free License 2.1 -- free or not?
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 16:04:58 +0200 Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: Francesco Poli wrote: The software was legally distributed to me, and that gives me some entitlements under copyright law. Which ones? Please explain (IANAL, hence I'm not so knowledgeable...). Most copyright laws state that you have certain rights to use the software if you legally acquire a copy. Ah, OK. I knew that (though not in such detail). I asked because I thought you were referring to warranty-related rights... Anyway, thanks for the useful URIs! :) -- Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpmCUfGbGvht.pgp Description: PGP signature
which Debian section?
Not sure if this is the best place to ask this: I built a program, and am now working on a creating a Debian package for it. the program is an MEncoder frontend, and it depends on MPlayer to work (without it, it would crash on startup). MPlayer is not in the debian archives, from what I understand because of patents. I put MPlayer as a 'Suggests' in my program. My question is, where does my program belong? contrib, or main? - ods15
Re: which Debian section?
Hello Oded, Am 2004-10-24 13:40:55, schrieb Oded Shimon: Not sure if this is the best place to ask this: I built a program, and am now working on a creating a Debian package for it. the program is an MEncoder frontend, and it depends on MPlayer to work (without it, it would crash on startup). ??? MPlayer is not in the debian archives, from what I understand because of patents. I put MPlayer as a 'Suggests' in my program. This is Wrong, because if your frondend crashs if MPLayer is not installed, you must change it from Suggests to Depends or maybe Pre-Depends. My question is, where does my program belong? contrib, or main? If your frontend meeds the conditons of GPL and DFSG, the you can put it into contrib. - ods15 Greetings Michelle -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/3/8845235667100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: which Debian section?
Oded Shimon wrote: Not sure if this is the best place to ask this: debian-legal is indeed the appropriate list for such questions. I built a program, and am now working on a creating a Debian package for it. the program is an MEncoder frontend, and it depends on MPlayer to work (without it, it would crash on startup). MPlayer is not in the debian archives, from what I understand because of patents. I put MPlayer as a 'Suggests' in my program. If your program requires MPlayer to work, and crashes on startup without it, then Suggests is inappropriate; you should have a Depends on mplayer. My question is, where does my program belong? contrib, or main? contrib. From Policy section 2.2.1, The main section: [...] the packages in _main_ * must not require a package outside of _main_ for compilation or execution (thus, the package must not declare a Depends, Recommends, or Build-Depends relationship on a non-_main_ package), [...] Your program requires a package outside of main for execution (and should have a Depends for that reason), so it cannot go in main. Hopefully, MPlayer will be accepted into the archive someday, so that this will not continue be an issue in the future. - Josh Triplett signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Preferred license for forums content - Part II
Hi, some time ago I asked [1] for the prefered license for a debian web forum. Now its time to force the license change for my forum [2] and so I want you to ask again if some plans I made are correct. - Changing license by date I want to change the license for postings which arrive after 01.01.2005 to the MIT/X11 License. Is it possible to have to licenses (one for the old postings, one for the ones posted after switching day) for an forum? Changing the license for all postings is a virtually impossible since I have to ask every poster (nearly 5000) if they are agree to the license change. The new introductory statement will look like this: --- All Postings published in the forums/databases of this website are -if they were created or modified before 31.12.2004 23:59h and if noting else is stated by the author- published under the GNU Free Documentation license. All Postings which were created after 01.01.2005 00:00h are -if nothing else is stated by the author- published under the terms of the MIT/X11 license as follows:.. --- - Promoting the new license Currently and until the license switch I mention the license under which the postings fall only in the Terms of use page [3]. I think this has to be changed to make it clearer to the poster. I plan to provide a text like All Postings posted here are published under the MIT/X11 License.. on the posting form page. This should be enough? - Translating the license Is it possible to use a german translated MIT/X11 license or must I use the english original to be legal correct? I think a translated version will make the license clearer and better understandable to the user. Thankyou again for your help and your statements. Bye Sebastian Plese Cc me as I'm not subscribed to debian-legal [1] Msg-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2] http://www.debianforum.de [3] http://www.debianforum.de/impressum (text is german only) -- debianforum.de - die deutschsprachige Supportwebseite rund um das Debian-Projekt http://www.debianforum.de signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Mike Hommey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The point is, some drivers DO require firmwares. I'd rather say: Some depend on firmware. In that case, if the firmware is non-free, the driver can't go in main. Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the OS, isn't it? If there is at least one real-world device that works with the driver without needing to load additional firmware, I think the driver is unambiguously free from this standpoint. If no one can point to a device that the driver works with without the help of an additional non-free firmware blob, I'm not certain I agree that it doesn't have a dependency on non-free software. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the OS, isn't it? By system, I'm referring to the hardware as well. If there is at least one real-world device that works with the driver without needing to load additional firmware, I think the driver is unambiguously free from this standpoint. If no one can point to a device that the driver works with without the help of an additional non-free firmware blob, I'm not certain I agree that it doesn't have a dependency on non-free software. But almost every driver requires an additional non-free firmware blob. In general, there are two cases: 1) That firmware is in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user when the hardware was bought 2) That firmware is not in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user when they obtained drivers In most versions of case (2), the user will already own a copy of the firmware - it'll be on the Windows driver CD in some form. It would be trivial to add code to the driver packages to copy this code off the CD. At that point, in no case does Debian distribute the firmware. Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom rather than from a CD. The main/contrib split exists in order to make it clear to our users that their free software depends on non-free code. In the case of free software that interacts directly with hardware, that's almost always the case. If we're of the opinion that non-free firmware is unacceptably bad, we should move all drivers which require it to contrib regardless of the manufacturer's choice of storage device. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which Debian section?
On Sunday 24 October 2004 18:31, Josh Triplett wrote: debian-legal is indeed the appropriate list for such questions. Yup, so i noticed after skimming the archives after i sent my message :) Your program requires a package outside of main for execution (and should have a Depends for that reason), so it cannot go in main. I see, that makes sense then. If your program requires MPlayer to work, and crashes on startup without it, then Suggests is inappropriate; you should have a Depends on mplayer. Right, thats the thing though, MPlayer is nowhere in the debian archives, and most (of the people i know) compile MPlayer themselves, they don't use the unofficial Debian package for it. Having my program directly depend on MPlayer would force most users to either use dpkg --force, or install the package. At first I didn't have MPlayer in my depends or suggests at all, but was suggested at debian-devel later on to add it at Suggests, saying that it is common to add a Suggests to a program that requires a program outside Debian. To be more accurate, my program won't actually crash, and it can make shell scripts which can be run somewhere else instead, but without MPlayer it'll refuse to load any files or show any preview, making the program pretty useless... It wont even create a shell script unless you load a file. -ods15
Re: Preferred license for forums content - Part II
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 07:28:12PM +0200, Sebastian Feltel wrote: The new introductory statement will look like this: --- All Postings published in the forums/databases of this website are -if they were created or modified before 31.12.2004 23:59h and if noting else is stated by the author- published under the GNU Free Documentation license. All Postings which were created after 01.01.2005 00:00h are -if nothing else is stated by the author- published under the terms of the MIT/X11 license as follows:.. --- It probably isn't legitimate to claim a license in this manner in most jurisdictions anyway. You normally need an explicit grant from the copyright holder (while there are some case-law precedents in some places for certain forms of implicit licensing, they're lawyer-bait and not something to be relied upon). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the OS, isn't it? By system, I'm referring to the hardware as well. If there is at least one real-world device that works with the driver without needing to load additional firmware, I think the driver is unambiguously free from this standpoint. If no one can point to a device that the driver works with without the help of an additional non-free firmware blob, I'm not certain I agree that it doesn't have a dependency on non-free software. But almost every driver requires an additional non-free firmware blob. In general, there are two cases: 1) That firmware is in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user when the hardware was bought 2) That firmware is not in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user when they obtained drivers In most versions of case (2), the user will already own a copy of the firmware - it'll be on the Windows driver CD in some form. It would be trivial to add code to the driver packages to copy this code off the CD. At that point, in no case does Debian distribute the firmware. Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom rather than from a CD. He can sell the device with the firmware in it, or reverse engineer it without encountering any license agreements involving the firmware. It's a physical device with a copy of the data, like a book. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom rather than from a CD. He can sell the device with the firmware in it, How's that different? If the firmware comes on a CD the user can sell the device along with the CD. He can't copy the CD, but then he wouldn't be allowed to copy the eeprom in the other case. or reverse engineer it without encountering any license agreements involving the firmware. I don't see how that's different either. In what way could a license agreement prevent reverse engineering when the firmware is on CD, that could not be equally valid or invalid if the license agreement were applied directly to the hardware?
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom rather than from a CD. On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: He can sell the device with the firmware in it, On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 04:58:25PM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: How's that different? If the firmware comes on a CD the user can sell the device along with the CD. He can't copy the CD, but then he wouldn't be allowed to copy the eeprom in the other case. It's different because, when the firmware is built into the device, the person who has the device has the firmware. Note that this difference is similar in character to the difference between main and contrib. -- Raul
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Raul Miller wrote: Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom rather than from a CD. He can sell the device with the firmware in it, How's that different? If the firmware comes on a CD the user can sell the device along with the CD. He can't copy the CD, but then he wouldn't be allowed to copy the eeprom in the other case. It's different because, when the firmware is built into the device, the person who has the device has the firmware. The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware, because the firmware can be removed. Of course, there are relatively few examples where you'd *want* to remove the eeprom from the device, but similarly there are few examples where you'd want to sell the device without accompanying it with a CD.
Re: which Debian section?
On 2004-10-24 23:27:00 +0100 Oded Shimon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Having my program directly depend on MPlayer would force most users to either use dpkg --force, or install the package. ...or use an equivs package. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/equivs
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
It's different because, when the firmware is built into the device, the person who has the device has the firmware. On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 05:41:31PM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware, because the firmware can be removed. The person doesn't have the device at that point -- only part of it. Of course, there are relatively few examples where you'd *want* to remove the eeprom from the device, but similarly there are few examples where you'd want to sell the device without accompanying it with a CD. Of course, those examples include this one: inadvertently losing track of the CD. -- Raul
Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Raul Miller wrote: The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware, because the firmware can be removed. The person doesn't have the device at that point -- only part of it. The same reasoning applies for both examples if you refer to the combination of hardware plus CD as a device. Of course, there are relatively few examples where you'd *want* to remove the eeprom from the device, but similarly there are few examples where you'd want to sell the device without accompanying it with a CD. Of course, those examples include this one: inadvertently losing track of the CD. That's a difference, but it doesn't seem to be enough. It just means I need to rephrase the question: So what's the difference between a device with firmware, and a device with a CD plus a non-free license letting you copy the CD? In that case, losing the CD doesn't matter because the user can get another copy. The user can't modify the software on the CD, but then he had no permission to modify it when it's in hardware either.
