Re: are Debian mentors nuts? the DebConf scandal
On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 04:59:27AM +, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Just in case anyone's wondering - I checked with Mary-Anne Wolf (who I > met at Libreplanet some years ago) and she didn't send this mail. > Someone faked her identity. And on the offchance that the subtext here isn't clear, if someone is using other people's identities to make allegations of inappropriate behaviour, it's pretty reasonable to conclude that they're not acting in good faith. Anonymous disclosure doesn't require taking advantage of any legitimacy or goodwill other community members may have built up. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: are Debian mentors nuts? the DebConf scandal
Just in case anyone's wondering - I checked with Mary-Anne Wolf (who I met at Libreplanet some years ago) and she didn't send this mail. Someone faked her identity. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 10:49:12AM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz wrote: > On 2019-12-13 09:56, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > When someone explicitly says that they refuse to recognise part of your > > humanity it's natural to have an emotional reaction to that. It's > > reasonable to hold AH members to higher standards, but it's not > > reasonable to hold them to superhuman standards. > > No, either we have a CoC or not. > If it goes so much against your believes, humanity or whatever else, > that you can't answer in a sane language, ask somebody else to answer > in your name. Especially when you are in a team that wants to keep > the CoC upright. I think it's reasonable to suggest that Martina's language didn't show respect, but to immediately escalate that to listmaster and suggest that she has no place in Debian while expresssing no objection to the original provocatively transphobic post shows a focus on civility over actual respect for other humans. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 07:31:41AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote: > Martina, > > please tone down you expression, three times "asshole" sprinkled with > some "fuck off" is far above any acceptable limit here. > Not to mention "genocide" and "nazi". > And that from an AH/whatever team member, this is a shame for you and > Debian. When someone explicitly says that they refuse to recognise part of your humanity it's natural to have an emotional reaction to that. It's reasonable to hold AH members to higher standards, but it's not reasonable to hold them to superhuman standards. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 11:22:48AM +0100, Gerardo Ballabio wrote: > That is because I believe that people's sexual identities are > determined by objective facts, such as which chromosomes are there in > their DNA, and not by how they subjectively "perceive themselves". To be clear, and speaking as someone with a PhD in genetics, while you are certainly free to believe this (in just the same way you are free to believe that vaccines cause autism or that the earth is flat), you're wrong and it's reasonable for people to disregard your opinion on this matter. You shouldn't be deprived of the right to express your incorrect opinion, but there's no reason anyone should be obliged to give you space to do so - and there's no reason to prioritise your desire to voice your incorrect opinion over a recognition that that opinion causes harm to others. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: Results of the Antiharassment Team Survey
On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 08:37:30AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: > The no-mediation approach is un-inclusive towards people who > involuntarily write things that sound more harsh than meant. This is a > rather common pattern in nerds that we tend to overreact and overstress > things. Not doing any mediation before making actions such as expelling > people from the project is a violation of the diversity statement. It's of course reasonable for any review process to let you know that what you wrote appeared harsh and ask whether that's what you intended before taking any action. But if what you wrote *was* reasonably read as being harsh (even if your intention was not to communicate in that way), what would be the ideal end goal of mediation? Teaching you how to communicate more effectively seems like something that's outside the project's responsibility. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: What do Open Source Projects need? - part 3
Patrick Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: P.S.: Mark Shuttleworth, you have all my sympathy for recognizing the weakness of the Debian Project early enough to do it better. It's already been made clear to you that you're not welcome in the Ubuntu community. Please don't try to insinuate otherwise. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: please
martin f krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: also sprach Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007.06.06.1651 +0200]: OTOH we will happily ship any driver which uses a crap, security-hole-ridden, and often incompatible firmware as long as it is present in an EEPROM. Not a great argument. Except then it does not have to interface with the kernel ABI and cause headaches for our kernel maintainers. Nor does loadable firmware. Are you confusing it with closed-source kernel code like in madwifi? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: please
Bernd Zeimetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nor does loadable firmware. Are you confusing it with closed-source kernel code like in madwifi? the last time I took a look into the sources of madwifi it was not closed source, except for the firmware blob. But I have to admit that i didn't read the source since it works well on my card. The Atheros chipsets don't use firmware. The closed-source part of the madwifi driver is run in your kernel, on the host CPU. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Maintainers
Matthew Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about improving the NM application process so that people don't have to spend 4 months waiting for an AM[1,2,3,4], or to have their accounts created [5,6,7,8], or to be approved by FD[6,7]. Then there might not be such a need for the DM concept. I'd like to be able to maintain my packages without having to worry about the rest of Debian. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Proposal: The DFSG do not require source code for data, including firmware
Jacobo Tarrio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: El miércoles, 23 de agosto de 2006 a las 21:24:16 +1000, Anthony Towns escribía: We choose to apply the DFSG both to the components that the Debian system requires, and to what we use to provide debian.org services. It can be No, the DFSG are applied to what's provided by Debian, not to what it's required by it. The DFSG apply to The Debian system. The social contract doesn't define what The Debian system is. We could define it as What's shipped by Debian, but we could also define it as A system consisting of a computer and a Debian installation or Whatever is provided by Debian and run on the host processor. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Proposal: The DFSG do not require source code for data, including firmware
Bernhard R. Link [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We are giving a promise here, that with the stuff in our distribution you have the freedom to use it, to give it to others and to fix it. This means the missing of legal obstacles and the possibility to do so. For this discussion preferred form of modification is perhaps not the best definition. It's good for licenses as it is not easily to work around. I think here the difference is between the source being in a form practical to edit or not. Without a practical form there is no possibility to change it. And this is a limitation we have to make clear to people and not lock them into by claiming all is good and well and it could be part of our free operating system. We never included non-free applications in main because we felt that there was no need to. And, indeed, even in 1993 it was possible to use a computer without any non-free applications. That doesn't hold with the firmware argument. With applications, we had the choice between Free but less functional and Non-free but more functional. With firmware we have the choice between Non-free but on disk and Non-free but in ROM. There isn't a Free option at all yet. So I think the real question is How does us refusing to ship non-free firmware help free software?. If a user wants to use Debian, then the obvious thing for them to do will be to buy hardware that has the non-free firmware in ROM. Ironically, this will actually make it harder for them to ever use free firmware! I think it's reasonable to refuse to ship non-free code when there's actually a choice or when it's likely to provide an incentive to implement a free version. But right now, I don't see any evidence that refusing to ship non-free firmware will do anything other than cost us users without providing any extra freedom. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Proposal: The DFSG do not require source code for data, including firmware
Bernhard R. Link [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is not true in either direction. Not every non-free application has a free counterpart[1]. And not every hardware needs firmware. If you can find a single hard drive on the market that doesn't contain some sort of firmware, I'll be greatly impressed. Or, for that matter, a vaguely modern processor. Let alone bootstrapping a system (LinuxBIOS will suffice for a very small range of hardware), running a modern network card, using a graphics chip for any purpose other than unaccelerated 2D, or, well, pretty much any piece of hardware on the market today. For all practical purposes, it's impossible to obtain hardware that doesn't depend on firmware. Or which somes with no firmware at all. (Or where it makes no difference, I do not know if any IDE controler has firmware and I did not hear about IDE harddiscs able to replace it). Yeah, motherboard chipsets are probably about the only thing on a modern system that isn't obviously microcoded. Shame that the drives you plug into them are - vendors often provide firmware upgrades for IDE drives. There also is still the non-free section (or split it into non-free-host-apps, non-free-periperical-apps, non-free-docs, ) so that people can still get it working easily without pretending anything if free or can be part of a free operating system. I'm entirely happy with us making it clear that firmware isn't free-as-in-DFSG. I'm not happy about us leaving it out of the default install images. I'm not saying we should refuse to ship non-free code. I've voted to keep non-free in the last GR about it. I'm against putting things in Debian which are not free. If it is in Debian, I want to be sure that I am allowed to modify it and get it working with some work. If I' bye stuff with ROMed firmware I know it is in there and what I have to expect. If you believe that you can buy hardware without ROM firmware, then I think it's pretty clear that you don't know it is in there. If I have to get in from the non-free section, I know I'll have no chance and try to buy something where the manufacturer gave specs and someone worked on them. If everything is in main I'm lured in a false feeling of security and have no easy way to distinguish and choose the vendor with a free firmware. Or you'll go and buy some hardware with the firmware in eeprom where it's a pain to replace with free firmware. Would you also ask to include non-free drivers if they had stable interface and the kernel had a bochs included by default to run them? No. There's plenty of hardware with free drivers, and I think that us refusing to provide the non-free ones does make a difference. I run no non-free drivers on any of my hardware. At the point where it's possible for me to run a machine without any non-free firmware, I'll be happy to drop it. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: What if we introduced the concept of area maintenance? Like saying Matthew Garrett is part of our hardware support team, so can thus NMU any package that needs changes to support that release goal. with the proviso that a bug gets filed with the NMU patch [0] at the same time. We already have something like that with 0-day NMUs for certain transitions authorised by the RMs. That's certainly an interesting idea, and I'd be happy to explore it. How do other people feel? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
Thomas Viehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you have a rough overview (maybe from your ubuntu experience) which (types of) packages will be affected? An example might be adding support to wacom-tools to automatically configure a device node on tablet PCs and ensuring that X is configured to automatically use that device node. In general, the integration work stems from packages that provide hardware support plus packages that depend on that hardware. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Ubuntu is different, was: Minutes of an Ubuntu-Debian discussion that happened at Debconf
Ottavio Caruso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Raphael Hertzog [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We all have to acknowledge that Ubuntu is different from other derivatives by the success and by the fact it's not binary compatible! Many Debian derivatives have been binary incompatible with Debian itself. Ubuntu is hardly different from other derivatives in this respect. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Call for a new DPL mediation ... This will be the only thread i will reply to in the next time about this issue.
Clint Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I beg to differ in a small detail. The project gets to decide which _team_ is the official team, but now who all constitute the team, or how the team is run internally. Why not? Because the consitution doesn't appear to allow it? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Call for a new DPL mediation ... This will be the only thread i will reply to in the next time about this issue.
Andreas Barth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A GR can definitly override any decision, and restore Sven's commit access. No. A GR can override any decision made by the DPL, a delegate or the technical committee. A GR can not override a decision made by an individual developer or a team of developers. I guess you could argue that svn.debian.org is adminned by a delegate of the DPL, and a GR could force them to restore Sven's commit access. But the d-i team could then move their svn archive somewhere else and refuse to provide Sven with commit access. (This ia documented in section 4.1 of the constitution) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Call for a new DPL mediation ... This will be the only thread i will reply to in the next time about this issue.
Goswin von Brederlow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: People keep saying that you can't force volunteers to do anything but that is wrong. You (as in GR, DPL or proper delegate) can always force them out, replace them with someone else or disband the team completly. Under which section of the constitution? The d-i team isn't made up of delegates. The release managers could be instructed to use a different installer and the admins could be instructed to remove the website or repository, but I don't see any mechanism by which the team itself can be altered via the constitution. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mac project?
dann frazier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Though all the pieces may be there, I don't know if the installer knows how to deal with these systems. That might be a question for debian-boot. It doesn't. There's a bunch of little problems, and I've been working on those with Colin Watson. There's also the problem that the stock kernel (Debian and upstream) doesn't yet support the hardware, but that should be rectified soon. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reducing my involvement in Debian
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [0] Including assuming dictatorial power: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/the_security_th_1.html The definition of 'dictatorial' given here is worth noting, even if you don't read the rest of it. quis custodiet ipsos custodes?=20 The very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. Just to clear up any conflusion, as is documented in the Debian constitution any decision made by the DPL or any delegates (including the mailing list admins) may be overruled by a simple majority in a GR. I'm not quite sure how that could be considered above the law. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
DPL team
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 03:30:51AM -0500, Branden Robinson / Debian Project Leader wrote: (CC:ed to -project - please reply there) The DPL Team has been itchy to organize a miniconf-style meeting of various security personnel since DebConf ended Has it? That was over 2 months ago. The DPL team started off with minutes of meetings where stuff like this was discussed, but this seems to have vanished. The desire to have a meeting doesn't seem like something where privacy is an issue, so it'd be nice to get back to a situation where the wishes of the leadership team are made known to the project as a whole. It'd potentially make it easier to ensure that they happen. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Scripsit Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] But that's already possible. The majority (all?) of licenses that we ship don't prevent me from being sued arbitrarily. The majority (all!) of license we ship do not demand that you agree *in advance* to waive your usual protections against arbitrary lawsuits in exotic courts. Why does the exotic courts aspect actually make any significant difference? Are you honestly asserting that the cost of me travelling to, say, Finland is going to be large compared to the costs of hiring a lawyer to defend me? The only difference that choice of venue makes is that it potentially increases the cost for me. By orders of magnitude. I'd like to see those figures. Within the UK alone, I can end up paying fairly large travel fees to deal with a court case. It may be that you do not have any concept of home court within the UK. That does not mean that the rest of the world's Debian users should be expected to suffer from that fault. If I'm living in the Scottish highlands, that doesn't help a great deal. I'll agree here ! Then why leave easy targets to lawsuit sharks ? How do we protect against that currently? We protect against leaving easy target by considering software non-free if its licence demands that you position yourself as an easier target that you would be without the license. Any license that imposes any restrictions on me leaves me an easier target than I would be without the license - it's much easier to find an excuse to sue someone over a piece of GPLed software than a piece of BSD licensed code. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK
Stephen Frost [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For this part it's a misunderstanding of what commercial means. I tried to work past this in the thread on d-d where I brought up the possibility of Debian being a commercial organization and it was made quite clear to me (by Manoj, if memory serves, sorry if I'm wrong) that there was no such misunderstanding about the term. It was understood that commercial !=3D for-profit and that it was being commercial at all which was the problem. Well, no, that doesn't obviously follow. It's clear from this discussion that people do disagree about what the word commercial means, and that (for some) commercial is worse than sells things. It's somewhat worth pointing out that Mark has something of a reputation [...] Not relevant and so not worth commenting on. Honestly, I wish these constant attempts to assign blame for this situation would just stop. =20 I'm not trying to blame anyone. When it comes to I don't follow debian-uk and it certainly doesn't sound like it's actually been resolved in an acceptable way regardless, it's entirely relevant. There are some people for whom things will not be resolved in acceptable ways. It's worthwhile to attempt to convince Debian at large to become a commercial entity. This didn't seem terribly likely to happen when I brought it up last but perhaps it's time for another go at it. When it comes to the technical side of things, policy follows practice. It's long been the case that Debian sells CDs at European events. To the best of my knowledge, until now there has never been any real complaints over this sort of behaviour. It's hardly as if we've been hiding this - see http://www.debian.org/events/2003/1008-linuxexpo-report for instance. I'd argue that this isn't something that Debian as a whole has an objection to, and that (as a result) the website should be changed. I don't think it's hard to know why the current situation has arisen... Some folks believe, as I do, that it'd be alright for Debian to be a commercial entity, and they then decided to just do it. It's unfortunate they didn't first get Debian/SPI to agree with them. If they had then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The current situation of Why Debian doesn't sell CDs. I've no idea why that's the way it is. What historical process led to this situation? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, I'm not sure that's much of a counterargument. Just because DUS has chosen as partners companies that are a) leaders in their field and b) happy with the arrangement doesn't mean that its CD sales have zero impact on *others* that might be trying to sell CDs, does it? Not that I have a problem with Steve, Phil, and the others either buying or selling CDs, but we should consider whether it's appropriate to be selling them under the name Debian UK Society. Maybe it doesn't a damn bit of difference, though -- whether it's DUS, or Phil and Steve, they're obviously going to be sold at the Debian booth, so the name endorsement is already there, right? From what I recall, the only other people that typically sell CDs at UK shows are the people that provide us with CDs. It's /possible/ that in the absence of Debian selling CDs, other companies would have sprung up to do so - but that's fairly extreme handwaving. No evidence has ever been presented that this situation discourages anyone. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK
Merle Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When it comes to the technical side of things, policy follows practice. So why flout previous policy? Presumably there's some past practice which caused it, even if it's just writing. If you really believe no-one objects, make the change first. Debian policy is not just post-event rationalisation of DD actions. Manoj I have seen debian booths selling stuff at every conference since '97 Because policy hasn't matched practice for a very long time. When that's the case, it strongly implies that policy is wrong. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK
Modesto Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Manoj I have seen debian booths selling stuff at every conference since '97 Because policy hasn't matched practice for a very long time. When that's the case, it strongly implies that policy is wrong. That doesn't show that policy hasn't matched practice. Stuff can be sold from debian booths without the seller being debian (or calling their business debian). Indeed, that was the practice in the UK until DUS, wasn't it? What's the practical difference between these things? When people give money to a bunch of people standing at a stall with a big Debian sign on it, they assume that they're buying something off Debian. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK (was Re: What the DFSG really says about trademarks)
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 02:40:14PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: Mark, you keep on mentioning this. Precisely what personal details do you think D-UK holds about you, either correct or incorrect? I'm pretty sure that's it right there. And getting people's names wrong when replying to email is really quite pitiful... It's his name. It may not be what he prefers to be called, but that's an entirely separate issue. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian UK
Stephen Frost [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) Holding money in the UK on behalf of Debian 2) Selling t-shirts and whatnot 3) The name issue with 'Debian-UK' 4) The 'opt-out' membership 5) The beer-bashes 6) The bank account For my part, I think #1, #3 and #6 go just fine together. Sure. Let's skip that bit. #2 and #5 work fine together also but shouldn't be done under something claiming close ties to Debian. Right, and there's some amount of contention on this point, which I think is the main issue that we should be considering. I think part of the problem is that commercial has connotations of Red Hat like organisation, which gives an immediate no reaction. Businesses are not inherently evil but they do have different priorities than Debian. I don't follow debian-uk and it certainly doesn't sound like it's actually been resolved in an acceptable way regardless. It's somewhat worth pointing out that Mark has something of a reputation for inter-personal friction. The probability of the situation being resolved to his satisfaction is small, but (to the absolute best of my knowledge) he's the only UK-based developer to have raised any serious objection to the way things have been handled so far. Personally, I think Debian/SPI should be selling things but I respect that the apparent majority disagrees with me on that. Certainly if Debian/SPI isn't going to do it then Debian/SPI in other countries shouldn't either. That's what Debian-UK comes across to me as- the UK branch of Debian. It seems you'd like for it to be percieved that way as well. It's not if it's selling things. Simply using the argument Debian's legal entity doesn't sell things, therefore no closely associated entity should sell things either isn't very convincing - it's more worthwhile to look at /why/ SPI doesn't engage in any commercial activities. The usual arguments seem to be: a) It impairs donations (we've seen no sign at all of this happening in the UK) b) It impairs competition (the leading Linux CD manufacturers in the UK supply us with the CDs that get sold, and certainly don't seem to be complaining) c) It's Just Wrong (which is a bit difficult to argue against) But, as is so often the case, it's hard to know why the current situation has arisen. I guess the real question that we should be dealing with is: Is it inappropriate for an organisation that is closely linked to Debian and which uses the Debian name to engage in any form of commercial activity? Does the answer to this depend on whether it's for profit or not? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What the DFSG really says about trademarks
Merlin Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Apologies, it's not in those reports but the message http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/08/msg00278.html claims DUS funds that (non-exhibiting attendance at conferences is often classed as training/continuing personal development by other businesses). That would actually be Representing Debian at the Gnome advisory board meetings, as described in http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/12/msg00276.html . The rest of your responses show the same sort of level of misunderstanding of what's actually going on. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What the DFSG really says about trademarks
Michael Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Branden Robinson / Debian Project Leader [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do not understand to what specific activities you are referring to when you refer to trading. Already in its short life: buying and selling goods, hosting events, marketing DUS by appearing and speaking at events. To the best of my knowledge, Debian-UK has never hosted an event (the closest you could possibly argue is the annual Debian UK barbeque, which is something that's pretty much entirely unrelated to the Debian-UK society) and does not speak at events (though some of its members do). Good statistics on debian share and sales for UK don't exist, as for elsewhere in the world. Anecdotally, I get more enquiries at work for other distributions than debian, despite only listing debian in our adverts. I think better general UK commercial support could help make debian more common here. Do you believe that Debian-UK's actions inhibit the commercial support of Debian in the UK? Remember that the biggest retailer of Debian merchandise in the UK is run by the same people that provide merchandise to Debian to sell on their stand at UK Linux shows. (I think that my example of debianshop.com would be unlikely to complain of DUS itself because http://www.definitesoftware.com/ suggests it's the same firm that DUS purchases some stock from.) And vice-versa on occasion, I believe. DUS's leaders seem determined it should not be a charity. Suggestions that DUS should apply for charitable status are met with sarcasm, silliness and slanted interpretation like http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/debian-uk/2005-August/010548.html Nobody has yet produced a convincing argument for why charitable status is any way preferable under UK law. It's been demonstrated that US law is fairly different in this respect. As currently set up, it buys and sells things to raise money which is then spent on equipment, events and training for its members, as far as seen in: I'm sorry, I'm not able to find a single instance of money being spent on member training. Money /has/ been spent on parts for Debian machines, food for volunteers at events and funding delegates' participation in meetings. It's an entirely reasonable suggestion that Debian-UK be required to follow the DPL's requests regarding disbursement. If you'd ever made it, I doubt anyone would have objected. (I do apologise for repeatedly using the word you here, despite it being a public message. My personal beliefs prohibit me from using the third person in direct responses) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] My preferred name is you -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Spi-trademark] Re: What the DFSG really says about trademarks
On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 09:57:20AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: I do not want a strange not-for-profit *trading* as Debian here, instead of just holding donations for debian. It would compete with long-standing suppliers (debianshop.com?) and may deter UK commercial support, which needs to grow. The society will not solve its originally-stated problem well, if at all. When Debian has paid for me to attend conferences on its behalf, the money has come from Debian-UK. That in itself appears to contribute fairly well to its stated aim. (It's worth pointing out that debianshop.com is run by the same people that keep inviting Debian to turn up at UK conferences and, uh, sell t-shirts and stuff. They don't seem terribly deterred) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Debian Common Core Alliance? Why not Debian?
Michael Meskes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also I'm still waiting to see the explanation why you accuse me of speaking on behalf of the project. I'm pretty sure this is a communications problem too and if it's on my side I would like to correct it. You said that DCC would become part of Debian. That's Debian's decision, not yours. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Debian Common Core Alliance? Why not Debian?
Michael Meskes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Donnerstag, 25. August 2005 15:44 schrieb Matthew Garrett: You said that DCC would become part of Debian. That's Debian's decision, not yours. No, I said shall which, to the best of my knowledge of the English language, is the correct grammatical form to denote a possibility, a wish if you want to say so. That's not how any native English speaker I know of would interpret it (see You *shall* go to the ball from Cindarella, for instance), but that's the source of the misinterpretation. We've cleared that up, so that's good. But anyway, I've got another question. You mention Debian's decision. Since there will probably be no vote about the creation of a subproject, I wonder who's going to make that decision. Or are you talking about each maintainers decision to accept/refuse patches? In much the same way as most of Debian's decisions are made - the people who care make a decision, and if people disagree we have an almighty argument. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Core Consortium
Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exclusivity? As in, the idea of making a trademark license an exclusive one in a given area or field? I think that would be a very bad idea with Debian. Think of it in terms of namespace pollution. We complain about packages called Terminal, because it implies that other terminal programs are somehow less effective. The name carries some concept of exclusivity. Martin's suggestion of Debian Press has the same issue - it implies that any other Debian-related publishing company is somehow less attached to the project. I think Debian Common Core fits into this as well. My suggestion would be that the Debian trademark should be restricted to novel names and not used in descriptive terms. Microsoft Debian ought to be permitted - Debian T-shirts should not. (http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=showid=4921 has an interview with Bruce Perens, where he repeatedly uses the name Debian Common Core rather than DCC. If the idea is that DCC stands for Debian Common Core in the same way that NT stands for New Technology, ie that officially it doesn't, I think there needs to be a bit more consistency here) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Debian Core Consortium ? Why not UserLinux? Why not Debian?
Branden Robinson / Debian Project Leader [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I guess something like 2%-5% of the developer body as a whole is=20 involved in the DCC; I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at what=20 proportion of Debian's extended userbase use distros involved in it) For it to be meaningful, shouldn't we apply this same sort of analysis to Ubuntu, debian-edu, debian-med, Linspire, Xandros, Mepis, Knoppix, or any other customized Debian distribution? With the exception of debian-edu and debian-med (which are both official subprojects), I haven't seen any of the other distributions claim that Debian has been in the loop when the vast majority of the developers, well, haven't. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Core Consortium
Ian Murdock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Re the organization formerly known as the Debian Core Consortium: No need. We won't use the word Debian in the name--we'll call ourselves the DCC Alliance, where DCC stands for Debian Common Core. The comments on http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11543limit=nothreshold=-1 suggest that some number of people are confused about whether the DCCA is a Debian project or not. This is obviously rather less than ideal. Is there any way that we can make it clearer that you're a Debian derivative rather than part of the main project? Alternatively, are there any plans to become an official Debian subproject? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pledge To Killfile Andrew Suffield
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Matthew Garrett wrote: There comes a point where the negative aspects of someone's contributions grossly outweigh the positive ones. Andrew contributes Oh? As far as I can see, we have handled the 'negative aspects' quite well (as a project) so far, at least until this crap went out of d-private, where all it caused was a relatively mild flamewar, many ill feelings and a lot of waste of time. Just because the flames were diminishing and the matter was finally going to the bitbucket... someone HAD to spill it outside of d-private to see if the fire would grow strong again and burn more people. The (hardly infrequent) existence of absolutely pointless flamewars where Andrew is a major participant despite contributing approximately nothing of any use suggests that we don't handle the negative aspects well at all. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Debian Core Consortium ? Why not UserLinux? Why not Debian?
Ian Murdock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What does that mean exactly, to talk to Debian? The DPL is in the loop, plus a dozen or more Debian developers that work for the participating organizations. At Debconf (so some time after news of the DCC had appeared), the DPL denied having been approached about this. When was the DPL brought into the loop? Debian is a group of individuals, so is involving some number of those individuals not talking to Debian in just about the only sense one can do that? Oh, rubbish. There's a clear and traditional way of talking to Debian - you raise the subject on one of the project's mailing lists. Individual maintainers no more speak for Debian in general than I speak for Ubuntu, Progeny or Linspire. The DPL is something of a special case, but ought to be communicating with the rest of the developers in the process. I for one would be delighted if this were to become an official Debian project, and we are indeed planning to work within the existing Debian framework to the largest extent possible. I just figured coming in *assuming* any of that as a forgone conclusion would be seen as presumptuous. Maybe, but instead it looks like you've come in assuming that this is something that should be done alongside Debian rather than within it. Which is, uh, something that you seem to have been criticising Ubuntu for. If Debian makes a technical decision that is incompatible with business decisions made by members of the DCC, will the DCC members remain compatible with Debian even if it means losing out in certain markets? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Ongoing Firefox (and Thunderbird) Trademark problems
Thijs Kinkhorst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (I've Cc:ed -project - I think this is a more philosophical issue) However, in #4, an explicit exception is made for program names and version numbers. They are not considered fundamental enough to software to require them to be as absolutely free as source code. So if we accept this exception for software coming in, why can't we accept this same exception for software derived from our distribution? I think this argument is moderately persuasive. DFSG 4 allows a license to require a name change on modification. If Debian is granted an extra permission to keep the name the same, but that freedom is not passed on to downstream recipients, is the license free? It could be argued that DFSG 8 forbids that, but if Debian isn't granted that freedom then the license /is/ free. I think any interpretation of the DFSG that results in a free license becoming non-free if extra permissions are granted (even if those permissions are only to some people) ought to be incorrect. Of course, it's not entirely clear what scope DFSG 4 has. If a requirement to change the name is free, is a requirement to change name-related branding? I'd think that logos /ought/ to be covered under DFSG 4, but it's not made explicit. It might be beneficial though to have an agreement with MoFo that allows for downstreams of Debian to also use the name, as long as they only modify the package in ways similar to Debian. If you have a downstream that just copies, or copies-and-fixes-bugs, this would surely be just as acceptable to MoFo, right? There's some issue of trust here. The Mozilla Foundation believes that Debian is able to produce packages of equivalent quality to their own, and so doesn't worry about us tainting their image. That's not necessarily true of our downstreams (and, let's face it, not all Debian-derived distributions are of equal quality) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Discussion of bug #311683, default kde install shows porn
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett wrote: Mark, not everyone who criticises Debian is attempting to destroy us. Basic politeness like using someone's chosen name escapes Matthew Garrett. He's also arguing against something he made up. Cool. Basic politeness like using the second person when you're replying to someone? Christ. I have better things to do with my life than remember everybody's preferred name, spelling or pronoun. If you're that worried about what people call you then put it in your signature. Otherwise, the default behaviour in English is to use names rather than initials. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Discussion of bug #311683, default kde install shows porn
Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, we will ship a sarge release which will show porn to our kids by default ? Using a non-default desktop with a non-default screensaver configuration will, under certain circumstances, potentially result in children being able to see pornography. So, uh, no. We won't. I don't want *ANYTHING* to do with that, and if you go this way, i hereby demand that my name is removed from any file containing it on this pornographic sarge release. If you've contributed anything to Debian under a license that allows you to do that, then I think we have other issues. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Discussion of bug #311683, default kde install shows porn
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is R Armiento trolling and trying to block release? I can only wonder at the motives. I hear he's been indicted for war crimes. No, seriously, what do you think? Is the explanation more likely to be: a) He wants to delay Debian's release in order to avoid losing money on a bet he's made that Debian won't release before the end of June; OR b) That he thinks discussion of this bug is important? Mark, not everyone who criticises Debian is attempting to destroy us. Given the timing of things, it's entirely reasonable to bring this discussion up on a public list rather than just the BTS. If people think the bug is important, we should hold the relase. If not, we shouldn't. (Personally, I think it's an indescribably stupid thing for KDE to override the default xscreensaver settings. They exist for a reason) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Discussion of bug #311683, default kde install shows porn
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree, but only those qualify for a grave bug in debian at present. See http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities Policy is defined by current behaviour. It is not prescriptive. As a project, we are free to decide that this is an RC issue for whatever reason we want to. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GFDL freedoms
On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 11:49 +0300, Thibaut VARENE wrote: (I've shifted this to -project - it's not really relevant to -private) This is yet another interesting concept of freedom, democracy, and interest of our users. For the benefit of the *very small part of mind-twisted people that absolutely want to distribute GFDL-ed doc in no other ways than those that could potentially infringe the license*, we would deprive the immense majority of those moderately sane people who just ask for some good doc along their free software, to be able to code at pace, distribute their code and doc in regular ways and focus on useful things. We want freedom for everyone we provide software to, not just most people we provide software to. That /is/ a fundamental part of Debian and free software. I might not grasp the whole concept of it, but I'm having really hard time figuring out who would *need* to *distribute* *FREE* documentation on encrypted/DRM media, for instance. Wikipedia is under the GFDL. It would be nice if someone could produce a portable version of Wikipedia for the Sony PSP, except the media is DRM-encumbered and so they probably can't. I think that's an excessive restriction. Just to remind you of some obvious fact: when trying to comtempt all _minorities_, one usually ends up comtempting *no one*, for it is impossible to comtempt *everyone*. But we *can* make people happy in this respect. It's possible for the GFDL to achieve its goal without preventing this use case. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL freedoms
Thibaut VARENE [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This has a name: ideology. Rarely (if not never) can it be actually implemented in real life. What is free software if not an ideology? We make the main/non-free distinction because we (generalising madly) believe that our users should have certain freedoms. Arguing whether that line should exist or not is ideology. Arguing about precisely where it should be drawn doesn't affect that. You're also forgetting that some people your providing software to aren't allowed to *use* the freedom you give them. But that's another story, which leads us to the eternal discussion of should we align our policy to the least common denominator?, with a forseeable effect of letting us with nothing to provide to anyone :P Where local laws make it impossible to provide certain freedoms, that's an issue the people subject to those laws should address. We can support those efforts, but there's nothing else we can do about it. Consensus (as you seem to be a proponent of that idea) is not about satisfying everyone. When we *can* satisfy everyone, we should do. This problem only occurs under certain interpretations of the text of the license. As I see it, if I, as a user, download a copy of GFDL'd material and store it on an encrypted/DRM media for my personal use, I'd be having a good laugh if somebody told me I'm not allowed to, since I'm not re-distributing anything. No. Making a copy on an encrypted filesystem is clearly against the license - however, in several jurisdictions it's probably fair use, and the FSF would be unlikely to sue anyone over it. *Distributing* a copy on an encrypted filesystem is both against the letter and the spirit of the license. I think that's a freeness issue. As a side note, if one wants to be anal about the legal aspects, I think that every modern law system has the notion of being mandated (as in having a right) to sue/complain whatsoever (i don't know how this is called in english, but YKWIM). Given that, it seems to me that your PSP example is none of our concerns so far. If Sony wants GFDL doc to be distributable on PSP, *they* can arrange with FSF. Let's not add imaginary additional issues to those we already have. This isn't about giving us rights. It's about giving our users rights. We refuse to distribute all sorts of things even though we could do, because not all of our users would have the right to perform reasonable acts with that material. The DFSG ensure that our users know which rights they have upon receiving a package from main. Those rights should not require further negotiation with the copyright holder. It's also possible for reasonable people to show a little common sense and not try to make everybody's life a nightmare because they found that under some crack-smoking reading of the License text, it is restraining their almighty freedom. Consensus and good will, this is what it is about. Ok, let's just simplify this to the basic issue: I believe that for software to be free, it must be possible to distribute it in DRM-encumbered formats, providing an unencumbered version is also available. Do you disagree? If so, why? PS: i'm not subscribed to d-project Cc:ed. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL freedoms
Thibaut VARENE [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garret wrote: I believe that for software to be free, it must be possible to distribute it in DRM-encumbered formats, providing an unencumbered version is also available. Do you disagree? If so, why? Of course I don't. This looks plainly sensible to me. And it would (but that's only my opinion) probably be sensible to any tribunal, if somebody wanted to sue someone for distributing GFDL'd (in its present form) content on encumbered format, whilst said content is also available clean elsewhere. Yet again, IANAL, these are just plain guesses. We need a lawyer to tell us. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. That's not just some of the copies, it's all of them. Making a DRM-encumbered copy and distributing it to someone obstructs the reading or further copying of *that copy*, even if you provide another copy which is unencumbered. This is something that's ridiculously easy to fix in the license, and it's something that we should ask to be fixed. We could take the attitude that it's unlikely that anyone will sue us over it. However, free software only works if people follow licenses (or, alternatively, if there are lots of lawsuits). This license isn't really free, but you probably won't get sued over it isn't a good argument - people would be likely to start using it against us instead... eg: In my previous example, what then could have been wrong in me telling the guy that knocks at the door: go get it on the web? What then could be wrong in distributing Wikipedia on PSP given it's available on the web as well? Ok. Another question. Should Debian follow the licenses in software we use, even if we probably won't be sued if we don't? Side question: do you agree that the world isn't Manichean and that the answer to our issue can't be black or white? Oh, absolutely. There are all kinds of shades of grey - the problem with them is that we only have a black and white (free or non-free) way of dealing with them. At the end of the day, all the shades of grey have to be divided into those two catagories. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL freedoms
Matthew Wilcox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I approach this primarily from a pragmatic point of view (from a our priorities are our users and free software PoV if you want to think in terms of the social contract). The GNU manuals are useful and important. They have always had the restriction on being able to remove the GNU manifesto and it really wasn't a problem until the GFDL put the issue in everybody's face. Of course there is the tension between that and a reasonable licence to pass on to our users. While I can see your argument about the lack of practical issues over the GFDL (of course, to some extent it's hard to know how many people have just dealt with this by violating the license...), it doesn't make me feel desperately comfortable. I'll try to work out a firmer argument as to why. There's one other issue, though - I'm not sure if your section 4 covers GFDL stuff like cover texts. They're not secondary to the main purpose of the manual, but they are invariant. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian domains
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett wrote: Which part of Get the people who hold the trademark to enforce it sounds unreasonable? The bit that has tension with the holder's assertion that The Debian trademark is managed by Debian on http://www.spi-inc.org/trademarks Get the people who hold the trademark to enforce it implies that we (Debian) do something that results in the legal holders (SPI) enforcing it. Which, uh, sounds like us managing the trademark. Even if it's to get them to act ultimately, we should decide what action is wanted. I'd be worried if a DPL candidate's attitude to SPI is really blame them for not managing something they think we manage and let's not help. I'd be worried if that was *anyone's* attitude. It's certainly not mine. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian domains
On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 02:08 -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote: I'm just doing the due diligence bit. Sending them a cease and desist probably won't lead to trouble. They'll probably walk away from a stupidly long domain name like that. I just wish that we had our ducks in a row from a trademark license agreements with existing friendly entities point of view. You guys do whatever you think best. My recollection is that we're currently blocked on the trademark committee here. Has there been any progress in drafting a useful trademark license? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian domains
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Regardless, I would start by accepting Gregg's offer and using domain dispute procedures for the removed ones, if we want the domain. I think the first one is the registrar at http://www.enom.com/terms/drp.asp and this seems straightforward, covered by 4.a., 4.b.(i) and (iv). Will the DPL dispute it, does SPI need to, is there a better delegate or should a random DD act? Our trademarks are held by SPI, so I'd assume that we need to act through them. I'd suggest simply sending a cease and desist type message to the current holders before resorting to dispute resolution procedures - it generally looks better if you've tried to settle things quietly first. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian domains
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you *know* how it's viewed by dispute resolution panels, or are you assuming that too? Debian isn't a legal entity. Our trademarks are held by SPI. It's possible that a third party can get dispute resolution panels interested in a specific case, but that's a situation that worries me. Which part of Get the people who hold the trademark to enforce it sounds unreasonable? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Social pressure on mailing lists (Was: Re: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting)
Norbert Tretkowski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Ingo Juergensmann wrote: Your wording is not on a level I would expect from a DD. And especially not on a level I would expect from someone who runs for DPL. Ok. It's probably the case that I went too far there, and I do apologise for that. However, I /do/ think we need to be more willing to apply social pressure against people whose sole contribution to mailing lists is to disrupt them. The status-quo is plainly not desperately helpful, and I'm not a fan of using technical or policy measures as anything other than an absolutely final resort. (m-f-t -project - this isn't a technical discussion) -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Social pressure on mailing lists (Was: Re: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting)
Sebastian Ley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Dienstag, 15. März 2005 22:37 schrieb Matthew Garrett: However, I /do/ think we need to be more willing to apply social pressure against people whose sole contribution to mailing lists is to disrupt them. Yeah, ignore them. Works great for me and would be the ultimate solution if everyone did. Unfortunatly there are still too much people who happiliy take every bait... Not all anti-social list users usefully respond to being ignored, and simply ignoring them provides little discouragement to others who are marginally less offensive. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian release strategy
On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 10:16 +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: I don't know what you'll consider as release criteria, but if you mean the list at http://release.debian.org/sarge_rc_policy.txt - that's unchanged for quite a long while now. That's partly it, but it'd also include stuff like (for Sarge): Debian Installer release Support for testing proposed updates Support for testing security builds and so on. The rc policy defines what needs to be done for general packages, but doesn't give much idea information about what needs to be done for the distribution as a whole. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian release strategy
Daniel Ruoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * I had recently post a message to debian-project[1] suggesting that we could plan structural changes in Debian, I mean, We all know that Debian releases when it's ready, but few people know what the it means. For example, if the init maintainers decide to define the locale environment variables at the boot process, many packages would break and then Debian would be far from being ready. I'm not criticizing this structural changes, but I do think that the DPL could coordinate this sctructural changes in a way more people know what it means by when it's ready. I would like the candidates to comment on this topic. I think it would be helpful if (in future) the release team would communicate their list of release criteria well in advance of their estimated time of release. Having some idea of what needs to be done before a release will even be considered would make it easier to maintain motivation - there's been various times during the past 18 months or so where people have voiced incredulity at the idea of us performing a release at any point in the near future, and that makes it significantly harder to concentrate on working towards that release. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian release strategy
Hm. I meant to send this to -vote - sorry about that. Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Daniel Ruoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * I had recently post a message to debian-project[1] suggesting that we could plan structural changes in Debian, I mean, We all know that Debian releases when it's ready, but few people know what the it means. For example, if the init maintainers decide to define the locale environment variables at the boot process, many packages would break and then Debian would be far from being ready. I'm not criticizing this structural changes, but I do think that the DPL could coordinate this sctructural changes in a way more people know what it means by when it's ready. I would like the candidates to comment on this topic. I think it would be helpful if (in future) the release team would communicate their list of release criteria well in advance of their estimated time of release. Having some idea of what needs to be done before a release will even be considered would make it easier to maintain motivation - there's been various times during the past 18 months or so where people have voiced incredulity at the idea of us performing a release at any point in the near future, and that makes it significantly harder to concentrate on working towards that release. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Front Desk members
Joerg Jaspert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: they is gender-neutral? Leads to very bad-sounding, at least for my ear, things like How have they contributed to Debian already? What do they intend to do for Debian in the future? How do they interact with others, such as users and other developers It's fairly common usage in English, and it'll probably even be considered correct in a few years... -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')
Josh Triplett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, many software licenses choose to go further than that, requiring that distributors refrain entirely from engaging in patent lawsuits against any authors of the software, regardless of whether those lawsuits are related to the software or not. We do not support the practice of patenting software, but we find it unacceptable for licenses to place requirements which pertain to other, independent works. We believe this policy is consistent with the principles behing in Debian Free Software Guideline 9, License Must Not Contaminate Other Software. There are two types of clause that fall into this catagory, and I think it's helpful to distinguish between them. The first terminates your patent license if you sue for unrelated patent issues, and the second terminates your copyright license. Earlier discussion on -project seemed to suggest that people were more or less happy with the first, and less happy with the second. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dealing with drivers that need firmware on the filesystem
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I must confess I do not see it that way. I think of Debian as distriuting softwware that runs on a platform, this platform consists of hardware, and, perhaps, associated software burned into ROM/flash. We do not distribute the hardware, and the user arranges for control to be transferred to Debian on power on. I, thus, draw a line between what runs above this line, and things that run below, that existed before Debian started running. As you say, there is a line to be drawn, and where that line gets drawn is fairly subjective. I'd prefer to draw the line at a point that results in consistent provision of freedom - if the availability of free firmware is a worthwhile thing, then I think we ought to want it in the firmware in flash case too. On the other hand, if our users don't need free firmware when it's in flash, why do they need it when it's on disk? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: License of old GNU Emacs manual
I've Cc:ed this to -project - followups should probably go there. On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 10:24 -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote: Either way, the people who are pushing the strict DFSG above all else have to see that the fundamental problem is that there are useful bits out there that Debian users will want to use (such as the autoconf documentation --- if someone hasn't issued an ITP for it in non-free yet, I will, soon, because I need it), that are licensed under licenses that do not meet a strict interpretation of the DFSG. I agree that interpretations of the DFSG that remove large quantities of material that we've previously thought of as free software are wrong, and I'm on record as being opposed to various attempts to do so. But DFSG 4 requires us to be able to modify content. We're willing to bend that somewhat due to requirements that the GPL and older BSD licenses have, but I don't believe that objecting to the existence of large and unmodifiable sections of political content that can't even be removed is a desperately strict interpretation of the DFSG. Now, I agree that the autoconf manual doesn't have this issue, and I agree that the /other/ problems with the GFDL are significantly less important. However, as written, the license forbids us from doing certain things that we generally believe should be possible. It's not really meant to, and it's fairly easily fixable. The fact that we have so far failed to do so is something of a disaster (yes, I know that it's not our fault), but I think we're acting in the right way here. We want to be /sure/ that we can guarantee our users the rights to put GFDLed documentation on sites requiring http authentication, or on an encrypted filesystem or whatever because those are freedoms that we tend to think are important *practical* issues. And free software is fundamentally about providing as many practical freedoms as possible. At some point, we have to draw a line and refuse to allow material into main if it doesn't ensure that certain freedoms are provided. GFDLed documentation with invariant sections plainly has issues there, and that's fairly fundamental. GFDLed documentation without them still has issues, even if they're accidental. It's only a problem if view this as a central role that Debian can and should play going forward. I happen to think an APT plugin might very well be the right thing. We can mark packages in non-free with different attributes how they are non-free. Are the packages evil firmware, or are the packages evil GFDL documentation from the FSF, or are the packages evil in some other form? Let users choose for themselves where they are willing to draw the line, instead of forcing depriving users of useful software/documentation/bits --- such as the autoconf documentation, (which I need, damn it!) --- because we presume that we are somehow entitled to choose for our users what software they can and should be able to run. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to expect our users to make different choices to us as to what levels of freedom are necessary, and providing tools to allow them to make that choice sounds like an excellent idea. However, I think it's also important for us to stick to the aim of producing a useful OS that can be entirely made up of components that provide all the freedoms of the DFSG. P.S. Besides, given that the Debian Logo needs to go into non-free, since the terms governing its use are also not DFSG compliant, who are we really trying to kid? I think that that's an argument for the logo being under the wrong license (and hence us having fucked up in the past) rather than the DFSG being wrong. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Free Documentation Guidelines was: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Anand Kumria [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (Re: requirements for documentation) There are many more contentious points that we ought to be able to enumerate as we did in while creating the DFSG. I shall try to post a summary, frequently, of guidelines raised to keep discussion progressing[1]. Perhaps an easier way to do this would be to look at the DFSG and work out what changes need to be made. We have a set of freedoms that we believe software should provide - rather than providing an entirely different set of freedoms for documentation, we should try to justify any changes in those freedoms. Personally, I'm inclined to believe that free documentation should have all the freedoms that we think should be provided by free software. Do you believe it needs more freedoms? Fewer freedoms? A slightly different set of freedoms? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Free Documentation Guidelines was: License of old GNU Emacs manual
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anand Kumria [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't believe that Documentation is similiar enough to Software that we can blindly apply the DFSG. Please explain what documentation is in debian which is not also software. That is conspicuously absent from your summary. I suggest that there is no non-software documentation in debian at present and there probably never will be. Remember that software and programs are not synonyms. We altered the social contract precisely because not everyone agrees with that statement. I agree that everything in Debian should be held to the terms of the DFSG, and I agree that software is a better term than most others to describe non-executable strings of bits. Others disagree. But that's not an argument we have to have again, because the social contract no longer includes the word software in point 1. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Free Documentation Guidelines was: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 04 Jan 2005, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: If in main, what distinguishes the bits in a document (README.TXT) from the program (hello_world)? If in doc/main, would there be a single Since this is an old point, and we already it clear that there are two camps in the project, and we need to cater for the two camps, why bother? There is no necessity to attempt to make everyone happy. We do not need to cater for the two camps, especially as doing so will *not* make everyone happy. People who believe that documents should meet the same freedoms as programs will be unhappy about any documents in main that don't - people who believe that documents don't need to meet the same freedoms will be unhappy that any are removed. Either we treat documents in the same way as programs, or we don't. If we don't, we need to justify *why* a different set of freedoms is required. That justification needs to be strong enough to convince a 3:1 majority of developers, since it'll require changing the social contract. So far, I have not seen a single convincing argument as to why documentation needs different freedoms to executable code. The existence of this thread is a good opportunity to try to find some. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What the social contract actually says
(Cc:ed to -project, since it's effectively an interpretation of the DFSG argument. Again.) On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 22:53 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: Ah, maybe the posts stuck here are not problems? Well haleluja - let's rewrite our contract to clarify that we will hide anything but problems! The social contract says that our bug database will be publicly available. That's all. Yes, that's a limited definition of problems, but it's *our* definition of problems. It's up to individuals to decide whether they should speak publicly or privately. Your definition would appear to preclude the use of #debian-devel (it's not publicly logged), private mails between developers (they might discuss problems!) or developers discussing any sort of awkward issue when they happen to meet each other (unless it's recorded and put online afterwards, of course). -private is not always used appropriately. This is irritating, but it's not a breach of the social contract in any way whatsoever. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: License of old GNU Emacs manual
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (invariant sections) why not? we allow it for software, so why not for documentation? in case it's not obvious what i'm talking about, we (grudgingly) allow software which only allows distribution of modifications by patch. this is in no way different to adding extra material which modifies or refutes an invariant section, or even a patch which changes it after installation. It's clearly different to the idea of extra material which modifies or refutes an invariant section, since the user is never exposed to the code that's been patched out - it's an implementation detail. A GUI application which included text saying This software supports communism and was under a license that allowed us to add a line saying Debian does not necessarily endorse this statement is clearly very different to an application which allowed us to patch that line out. On the other hand, I find the idea of post-installation modification interesting. I think we'd want to talk to a lawyer first, though. Preferably several. actually, it's just a natural consequence of wanting to protect the logo and the trademark from misuse by scumbags -- scumbags being defined as anyone who would want to misrepresent themselves or whatever they're doing as being an official part of the debian project, regardless of whether what they are doing is compatible with or contradictory to our aims or not. We can provide the logo under a free copyright license but fairly strict trademark license. A restrictive copyright license prevents legitimate modifications as well, which isn't what we want. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consumer boycott of your company
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...as your company's logo is featured on their website. I see no evidence of a Debian logo or any mention of Debian at http://diversitybusiness.com/. In any case, Debian has no connection with and no influence over diversitybusiness.com. It's on www.ccai.com. Not that there's anything we can do about it. All my emails are being bounced back. Typical spammer. We'd like to help you but we can't. The people who are harrassing you are not connected with Debian in any way. I assume he means that his complaints to ccai are being bounced, rather than that he's rejecting mail. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consumer boycott of your company
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett writes: It's on www.ccai.com. Perhaps somewhere on the site, but I don't see it on the main page. I suppose he must have gone through the sites and made a list of companies he thought responsible. I wonder if Apache got one of his messages. It's got a Powered by Debian logo on the front page, right next to the Powered by Apache one. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Two Macedonias
On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 16:41 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote: * Matthew Garrett: Debian is not a document prepared by the Secretariat of the Council of Europe. As a result, it is not bound by this resolution. Following others in the area of geographical names helps to avoid conflicts. It's not Debian's task to take side in such international disputes. Absolutely. I was just pointing out that threatening to take us to the European court is not massively productive - threats don't tend to result in people taking you more seriously, and threats that are unenforceable anyway are even more pointless. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Two Macedonias
Vassilis Grigoriadis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am putting the Resolution so you can read it. I'm sorry to say so, but if Debian does not comply to the resolution of the foreign ministers of the EU than i will be in the unpleasent position to bring the subject to the EU court. (snip) Taking into account Resolution (95) 23 adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 19 October 1995 at the 547th meeting of Ministers' Deputies, the Secretarial is hereby instructed to use the following references provisionally for all purposes within the Council of Europe pending settlement of the difference which has arisen over the name of the State in question. They are to be used in all documents prepared by the Secretariat of the Council of Europe. Debian is not a document prepared by the Secretariat of the Council of Europe. As a result, it is not bound by this resolution. Taking the subject to the EU court would not result in Debian being obliged to change the name used. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Similarly, why should copyright not be used to protect free software use from gun abuse and nuclear technology abuse? Free software is not noticably harmed by gun abuse or nuclear technology abuse. It is noticably harmed by the use of software patents. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't see any evidence whatsoever that there's a strong majority who would agree with that. Then I can't see any evidence that there's a strong majority supporting your attempt to hand over control of free software to large corporations. Perhaps you should killfile less of the thread. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 03:07:28PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The GPL rejects users who want to distribute binaries without source. The MPL rejects users who want to sue the licensor for infringement of patents connected to the software. Why do you believe that one of these cases is significantly different to the other? We've been over this already. One is a significant burden, the other is not. This has got nothing to do with the point I raised, so I presume that you concede it. The entire point of the discussion is to determine whether one is a significant burden or not. Many people have expressed the view that the right of people to sue a licensor for infringement of patents connected to the software is insignificant compared to the damage that that right can cause. Simply dismissing this with a toss of your doubtless golden and flowing hair doesn't actually make those people's opinions go away. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 12:04:00AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: RMS has in the past claimed that failure to abide by the terms of the GPL results in a permanent loss of those rights (in respect to a specific piece of software, at least). If you're going to disagree with the copyright holder of what is probably still the largest single body of GPLed software in Debian at present, I'm going to want evidence of a decent legal standpoint for this opinion. RMS has in the past claimed that this has happened to various groups. RMS has been ignored. RMS has not pursued the matter, so one presumes the FSF counsel have indicated that he can't. So your belief that the GPL is free is entirely based on a belief that RMS is wrong, and your belief that RMS is wrong is based on an absence of something happening? If you want to claim that the only restrictions on freedom we currently accept are those that are entirely controlled under copyright law, you may be correct (the Apache License 2.0 is an obvious counter-example, but you could always claim that that's counter to normal policy and thus some sort of error). The clause you are referring to in the Apache License 2.0 has no effect on software without patents, due in large part to the efforts of -legal. It's probably non-free when applied to software with patents and enforced. This isn't particularly surprising; software patents are non-free is more or less a given. Enforced against whom? We don't accept restrictions as free because they use one branch of the law - we accept restrictions as free because they are either unimportant or because they protect free software more than they hinder it.=20 This indicates that a proprietary license is free if the software is useful enough. Therefore it's wrong. I'm sorry, I honestly don't see how you get to that conclusion. We don't accept restrictions because they protect free software more than they hinder it. We accept restrictions because they do not appreciably hinder it. There is no excuse for significant restrictions, nor has one ever been excused. The GPL's incompatibility with various other licenses hinders free software. We don't consider that to be a problem because we believe that the right to receive GPLed code with no further restrictions is more important than the right to, say, produce a derived work of GPLed code and OpenSSL. My suspicion is that if we were writing the DFSG today rather than in 1997, we wouldn't have any significant qualms about accepting licenses which restricted your ability to use software patents against the developers. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Of the opinions expressed so far (I'm taking into account views expressed on Planet Debian as well), there seems to be a narrow majority who believe that licenses which terminate if you allege infringement of a software patent in that software should be free. Is there anyone who hasn't expressed a view who feels otherwise? The situation seems less clear regarding licenses which terminate if you allege infringement of a software patent in other software. These do sound somewhat broader. The first sort of these merely terminates your patent license. It could be argued that this simply turns the license into one which is equivilent to something like the BSD license, which doesn't grant any patent rights in the first place. In that case, current behaviour would suggest that we would only consider this non-free if we believe that those patents will be actively enforced. The second sort of these terminates your copyright license to software unrelated to your suit. How do people feel about that? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 01:14:42PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: So your belief that the GPL is free is entirely based on a belief that RMS is wrong, and your belief that RMS is wrong is based on an absence of something happening? No, it's based on the paragraph which you oh-so-convinently deleted. Don't play bullshit games. In general, we respect the interpretation of licenses that the license author and copyright holder wish to enforce. We may not always agree with it, but we tend to respect it (see the Pine case, for example). You have come up with an argument for why you believe RMS to be incorrect, but you have come up with no argument for why we should act on your interpretation. It certainly goes against past Debian behaviour, it would potentially worsen our relations with the FSF even further and it leaves us open to legal action if you happen to be wrong. I don't think you're making a desperately compelling case. The clause you are referring to in the Apache License 2.0 has no effect on software without patents, due in large part to the efforts of -legal. It's probably non-free when applied to software with patents and enforced. This isn't particularly surprising; software patents are non-free is more or less a given. =20 Enforced against whom? Doesn't matter. So a single enforcement action of a patent at some point in the past should result in us treating that software as non-free? How about patents that are only enforced in certain countries? I'm actually genuinely interested in this. Our track record on dealing with patented code isn't entirely consistent. We probably ought to make that clearer. This indicates that a proprietary license is free if the software is useful enough. Therefore it's wrong. =20 I'm sorry, I honestly don't see how you get to that conclusion. You said that a restriction is free if it protects free software more than it hinders it. Therefore any license is free if it is in some way sufficiently useful to free software, regardless of what restrictions it introduces. You have introduced the notion that restrictions can be excused. In order to be interesting in this case, the restrictions must have the aim of helping free software. The usefulness or otherwise of the software is completely irrelevent. Sorry, I though that was clear from context. The GPL's incompatibility with various other licenses hinders free software. This is a feature of both licenses together. You cannot claim that the GPL is somehow responsible, for example: Right, but modifying either license would increase the number of works we could produce without duplication of effort. We don't consider that to be a problem because we believe that the right to receive GPLed code with no further restrictions is more important than the right to, say, produce a derived work of GPLed code and OpenSSL. =2E..the SSLeay license, part of OpenSSL, which has a clause that was written for the explicit purpose of hindering combination with GPLed works. So the SSLeay license has a restriction that hinders free software? Your argument appears to imply that we should consider this non-free. Instead, we appear to have decided that the restriction doesn't hinder the freedoms that we consider important. My suspicion is that if we were writing the DFSG today rather than in 1997, we wouldn't have any significant qualms about accepting licenses which restricted your ability to use software patents against the developers. I'm pretty sure that we'd include a clause to explicitly prohibit it. I can't see any evidence whatsoever that there's a strong majority who would agree with that. The social contract was accepted democratically. At the point where it was accepted, the majority of people agreed with each of the requirements it imposes. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Company B cannot make counterclaims from its defensive patent portfolio, because that would invoke the termination clause and kill its modified version. Company B has no practical defence against this lawsuit, so the modified version is killed. They have been effectively trapped in a double-bind. Why are we concerned about people who patent pieces of software while claiming that they'll only use these patents defensively? There's always the possibility that they'll use them against free software authors in the future. I'm not convinced that encouraging patent suits under any circumstances is desperately important. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Michael Poole [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree with Andrew (and, from what I can tell, most of -legal) that license termination for a patent lawsuit unrelated to the licensed software is non-free. I cannot find offhand any license that is quite so broad. I believe that the RPSL's (https://helixcommunity.org/content/rpsl ) clause 11.1 is like this: 11.1 Term and Termination. The term of this License is perpetual unless terminated as provided below. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate: (c) automatically without notice from Licensor if You, at any time during the term of this License, commence an action for patent infringement against Licensor (including by cross-claim or counter claim in a lawsuit); -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Thomas Hood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The important part is that company B has no freedom to sue A for patent infringement while continuing to use software published by company A upon which it may have come to rely. Why do we consider that freedom important? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2004-09-19 13:24:06 +0100 Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: who believe that licenses which terminate if you allege infringement of a software patent in that software should be free. Is there anyone who hasn't expressed a view who feels otherwise? I have not expressed this view to debian-project or planet debian: patent licences which terminate on related patent action may be free. I do not see how copyright licences which terminate on patent action can be free. I'd assumed that your viewpoint would be at least that strong, and had included you in my impressions. Is your own view influencing your perception of a narrow majority? Not to the best of my knowledge. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael Poole writes: Company B's defensive claims also affect all other users of the original software -- now that they attempt to enforce their patent rights, no other users can assume themselves to be safe. Why do you assume that company B's claims must have to do with the original software, or even with software at all? I'd certainly feel that licenses that attempt to restrict non-software patent action ought to be non-free. I don't see any way that a license that enforced this would be helping free software. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 12:12:53AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The implication of the post I replied to was that any license that allows the removal of some set of the rights it grants should be non-free. The GPL is an obvious counter-example, since it allows you to lose all rights associated with it. Termination for non-compliance, in a publically redistributed work, is just a reflection of copyright law; it doesn't really change what you can and can't do. (You can always get another licensed copy). Every free license does this, really. RMS has in the past claimed that failure to abide by the terms of the GPL results in a permanent loss of those rights (in respect to a specific piece of software, at least). If you're going to disagree with the copyright holder of what is probably still the largest single body of GPLed software in Debian at present, I'm going to want evidence of a decent legal standpoint for this opinion. The use of a termination clause to introduce other restrictions (other than you must comply with the license), rather than simply writing those restrictions in directly, indicates that they probably aren't things you can write in directly, such as restrictions on use (copyright abuse aside for the moment; that doesn't help us, it just employs more lawyers). Such things are non-free restrictions (the set of things you're not allowed to restrict in a copyright license is fairly small). As far as I can tell, your argument is that You may not initiate patent suits against the licensor is equivilent to Initiating patent suits against the licensor will result in the loss of your rights under this license. I would tend to agree. You then appear to claim that the first is obviously non-free, and as a result the second is non-free. I see no obvious reason that the first point of this assertion is true. If you want to claim that the only restrictions on freedom we currently accept are those that are entirely controlled under copyright law, you may be correct (the Apache License 2.0 is an obvious counter-example, but you could always claim that that's counter to normal policy and thus some sort of error). I'd suggest that you're wrong here. The restrictions that the DFSG allow are the restrictions that were, at the time, associated with software that most people accepted as free. Any claim that they were accepted as free for other reasons (such as being entirely within the realms of copright law) entirely ignores the context in which the DFSG were written. We don't accept restrictions as free because they use one branch of the law - we accept restrictions as free because they are either unimportant or because they protect free software more than they hinder it. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Such a clause excludes certain (or more likely undefinded) person subgroups from the rights all other user get for this software. Not per default, but after a certain action of the user, but the software restricts its use to certain person subgroups. That seems to me very arbitrary. The GPL does much the same. If someone distributes GPLed software without complying with section 3 (which gives you various ways in which you have to make source code available to the recipient), then they lose the right to use that GPLed software. We have various licenses that terminate if you do something wrong - we've just come to the conclusion that it's acceptable that people not be allowed to do that thing. In the past, we've accepted various compromises on freedom because they help free software. The GPL's forced provision of source code is one of these. If we were writing the DFSG for the first time now, where would we draw the line with patent-related clauses? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:05:29AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The GPL does much the same. If someone distributes GPLed software without complying with section 3 (which gives you various ways in which you have to make source code available to the recipient), then they lose the right to use that GPLed software. We have various licenses that terminate if you do something wrong - we've just come to the conclusion that it's acceptable that people not be allowed to do that thing. That merely reduces to some licenses exist which are free and some exist which are not. This is trivially satisfied by the existence of one work under the MIT license (which is free), and one under the MS EULA (which is not) - and yes, we've just come to the conclusion that one is acceptable and the other not. The implication of the post I replied to was that any license that allows the removal of some set of the rights it grants should be non-free. The GPL is an obvious counter-example, since it allows you to lose all rights associated with it. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Patent clauses in licenses
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2004-09-14 12:25:41 +0100 Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a non-strictly related point, both the FSF and the OSI appear to consider clauses of this nature free. [...] On what do you base this opinion? The description of the Academic Free License at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html shows that they are aware of the patent clause it contains and deem it free anyway. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Patent clauses in licenses
Recently, we've begun seeing more licenses that are designed to discourage patent lawsuits. They usually involve something along the lines of If you engage in patent action against the licensor, bad things will happen. Patent action against the licensor usually takes one of two forms. The first is Any patent action against the licensor, with the second being Any patent action against the licensor connected to the licensed work. An example of the first is the RPSL[1]. Any patent action against the licensor terminates your copyright license, even if you're alleging infringement in an entirely separate area. The MPL[2] is an example of the second. Here, patent action only results in termination of the copyright license if the action alleges infringement in the copyrighted work. Bad things can also take one of two forms. The first is Termination of copyright license, which is the result of the two examples listed above. The second is Termination of patent license, which also appears in the MPL[3]. In the first case, you lose all rights to do anything with the software. In the second case, you only lose the right to make use of the patents - you are still permitted to use the software, though doing so may result in you being open to patent infringement suits yourself. The motive behind these licenses is, in many cases, simply to discourage software patent lawsuits. This is probably an entirely reasonable aim. However, it's a situation that didn't really exist at the point where the DFSG were written. As a result, it's difficult to gain any real idea as to whether Debian should consider these free or not. Of course, it's also possible to come to the conclusion that certain classes of these clauses are free and some aren't - there's an obvious degree of difference between termination of copyright license and termination of patent license, and also between termination on all patent suits or termination on relevant patent suits. As a non-strictly related point, both the FSF and the OSI appear to consider clauses of this nature free. The lack of any real consensus on this topic within Debian makes it difficult to negotiate with license authors. If we disagree with the FSF, we probably need to make it clear precisely why we hold this opinion, and then set about trying to change other people's minds. [1] 11.1 Term and Termination. The term of this License is perpetual unless terminated as provided below. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate: ... (c) automatically without notice from Licensor if You, at any time during the term of this License, commence an action for patent infringement against Licensor (including by cross-claim or counter claim in a lawsuit) [2] 8.2. If You initiate litigation by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declatory judgment actions) against Initial Developer or a Contributor (the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You file such action is referred to as Participant) alleging that: (a) such Participant's Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then any and all rights granted by such Participant to You under Sections 2.1 and/or 2.2 of this License shall, upon 60 days notice from Participant terminate prospectively, unless if within 60 days after receipt of notice You either: (i) agree in writing to pay Participant a mutually agreeable reasonable royalty for Your past and future use of Modifications made by such Participant, or (ii) withdraw Your litigation claim with respect to the Contributor Version against such Participant. If within 60 days of notice, a reasonable royalty and payment arrangement are not mutually agreed upon in writing by the parties or the litigation claim is not withdrawn, the rights granted by Participant to You under Sections 2.1 and/or 2.2 automatically terminate at the expiration of the 60 day notice period specified above. Where 2.1 and 2.2 grant you the right to use, modify and distribute. [3] 8.2. If You initiate litigation by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declatory judgment actions) against Initial Developer or a Contributor (the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You file such action is referred to as Participant) alleging that: (b) any software, hardware, or device, other than such Participant's Contributor Version, directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then any rights granted to You by such Participant under Sections 2.1(b) and 2.2(b) are revoked effective as of the date You first made, used, sold, distributed, or had made, Modifications made by that Participant. 2.1(b) and 2.2(b) grant you patent licenses. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]
Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 03:53:45PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: You're seriously suggesting that Debian wouldn't be laughed out of the park for releasing without Mozilla at the moment? If you aren't suggesting this, then that comment is irrelevant. Branden reminded me on IRC that the discussion is about the MPL, not about the Mozilla browser, which is triple-licensed under MPL/GPL/LGPL. My apologies for my confusion. Most of Mozilla is triple-licensed I believe that some remains dual-licensed under the MPL/NPL, and so deciding that the MPL is non-free certainly means that we can't ship Mozilla. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html certainly implies that some work remains to be done there. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GUADEC report
I was present at the 2004 GUADEC (GNOME Users and Developers Europen Conference) in order to represent Debian on the GNOME advisory board (at the request of the DPL) and to talk to companies active in the Linux desktop community. Several things were brought up several times by different people: 1) Many people use or have used Debian in the past and respect Debian to a surprising extent. There are some disagreements with respect to individual DFSG judgements, but the general principal of aiming for an entirely free distribution is seen as a good thing. 2) People believe that our release cycle is (a) too long and (b) not predictable enough. Part of this is due to the contrast with GNOME's 6-monthly time-based releases. 3) The way the DFSG is currently interpreted by debian-legal is not obvious to an outsider, and some interpretations are felt to be excessively extreme. Some companies feel that various licenses were genuine efforts to be DFSG free, but the discussion that followed their release was sufficiently confrontational to reduce any desire to fix any bugs. It's been suggested that the combination of 2 and 3 has led to us missing several opportunities for wider deployment, and they're probably issues we should look at in the future. More positively, the feeling is that the quality of our packaging is good. We're actively engaged with upstream and doing a fairly good job of pushing significant patches back, and there's a general perception of us as good community players. This is largely thanks to the efforts of the Debian GNOME team, who have done a great job of improving our relations. I raised two main issues at the meeting itself: 1) The use of copyright law in an attempt to protect trademarks. This is potentially going to be an issue for us, as it leads to artwork that we can't distribute in main. This is also less than ideal for upstream projects, as it reduces the level of branding and general market awareness. However, if we want to make any significant argument here, it seems likely that we need the ability to make a solid legal argument as to why copyright law is the wrong way of handling this. 2) The possibility that GNOME's adoptation of Java as an application development language would result in software depending on a closed JDK.The consensus appears to be that GNOME will never ship code that can't be run with free Java implementations. As things currently stand, it looks reasonably likely that we will be the first major distribution to ship with Mono 1.0 and surrounding libraries. This gives us an opportunity to be seen as a good development environment for the GNOME platform - however, to be able to take advantage of this, we are likely to have to reduce time between releases and make our approach to licenses clearer. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IMPORTANT/URGENT - PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM YOUR SITE!
In chiark.mail.debian.project, you wrote: BTW you made the error, in writing a mail and sending to non trusted sources. He didn't, though. Someone else included his name in a mail without his permission by attaching a list of signatories from one petition to another, which presumably irritates him as it depicts a political viewpoint which he may not have. In this case I think removing the mail is the correct thing to do - it's spam, it's potentially damaging and it's not his fault. However, could people actually check what people are complaining about before making knee-jerk reactions and telling them they shouldn't have done something they didn't do? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IMPORTANT/URGENT - PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM YOUR SITE!
In chiark.mail.debian.project, you wrote: And what it's the point on removing this? There are more Debian lists archives than the one hosted by Debian itself. Even, the mail-news gateway will make all the mails to be stored at news.google.com That's fine. He can deal with them as well. They're entirely not our problem. Would people honestly be happy to ignore forged mails that end up in the archive that, say, imply that the sender is engaged in acts of dubious legality and end up near the top of Google searches for that email address? -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IMPORTANT/URGENT - PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM YOUR SITE!
In chiark.mail.debian.project, you wrote: you were stupid enough to sign such a petition in the first place, so don't complain. it's well known that any such mass mailing is mainly used to harvest spam addresses. Which bit of SIGNATURES WERE STOLEN FROM ANOTHER PETITION ON AFGANISTAN did you fail to understand? An apology to him might be nice. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
