Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 07:45:30PM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz wrote: From the other candidates I'd like to know their opinion and plans (if there are any) about license/copyright requirements in Debian. I have no specific plans. My opinion on the subject is that while there may be good reasons for the current (rather strict) policy, I don't believe there are real risks involved with the older, laxer, policy that Debian used to carry in the past. The current policy could be described as 'nitpicking'. I don't feel strong enough about that to do something about it, however. IANAL and everything -- I might well be completely wrong. I believe a question about this has gone out to a lawyer, so that could well be a perfectly good resolution to that question. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
Charles Plessy wrote: 2) I think that the Debian operating system is defined by the interaction of its binary version and the source files necessary to use, study, modifiy and redistribute it. Non-DFSG-free files that happen to be codistributed with the source of the Debian operating system but have no function at all are not part of the system, and I would like maintainers to be allowed to keep these files in the original upstream material if it simplifies their work. Would that include files which we are not allowed to distribute (for whatever reason)? Do you think that the number of packages where the source had to be repackages is high enough to warrant a change of the DFSG? Thanks and cheers, Bernd -- Bernd ZeimetzDebian GNU/Linux Developer http://bzed.dehttp://www.debian.org GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79 ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4ba615d8.5030...@bzed.de
Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 07:45:30PM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
with 20100124144741.gd13...@kunpuu.plessy.org Charles Plessy came up
with a draft GR Simplification of license and copyright requirements
for the Debian packages..
From the other candidates I'd like to know their opinion and plans (if
there are any) about license/copyright requirements in Debian.
I don't think that such an important change in Debian should be pushed
by the DPL which, at best, should drive a discussion that lead to a
project-wide decision. While it is true (as Charles stated in [1]) that
electing a DPL with this in his/her platform would show some kind of
support to the initiative, it would be quite a twist: if we want to vote
on this, let's do that with the appropriate tool (a GR) rather than
piggybacking the decision in a different kind of vote.
On the content of the GR itself, I confess that point (1) (copyright
attributions) looks like a no-brainer to me. My reading of it is if
the license and/or the law do not require mentioning the copyright
*author*, let's avoid the self-infliction of doing that, with no other
change to the mention of *licenses* in debian/copyright. That is a
completely reasonable position.
A different question is how useful it will be in practice. AFAIK we do
have a pending question to the SPI lawyer on whether mentioning
copyright owner is mandatory anyhow no matter the license. Of course the
answer to that question will impact significantly on the potential
benefit of GR point (1).
On the contrary, I'm against point (2) of the GR. I do consider our
source packages to be part of Debian and hence subject to DFSG. If
something in upstream tarball is non-free, I believe we should do
repacking (there, we might use a bit more standardization on how we
implement get-orig-source in such cases, but that's a different
issue). In fact, doing that might even be a way to push our upstream to
get rid of those non-free bits from their tarballs as well.
As a final comment, I believe Charles GR proposal is sub-optimal in the
sense that it mixes (1) and (2), where one seems to be totally
controversial and the other might be quite consensual.
Cheers.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2010/02/msg1.html
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
Le Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 01:49:28PM +0100, Bernd Zeimetz a écrit : Charles Plessy wrote: 2) I think that the Debian operating system is defined by the interaction of its binary version and the source files necessary to use, study, modifiy and redistribute it. Non-DFSG-free files that happen to be codistributed with the source of the Debian operating system but have no function at all are not part of the system, and I would like maintainers to be allowed to keep these files in the original upstream material if it simplifies their work. Would that include files which we are not allowed to distribute (for whatever reason)? Do you think that the number of packages where the source had to be repackages is high enough to warrant a change of the DFSG? I think that we must not redistribute files that we are not allowed to redistribute, be they part of our operating system or not. I do not propose to change the DFSG, as it it relevant to the Debian operating system only, not to everything that the Debian project distributes (otherwise, we would not have a non-free section). I think that if a file that has no function in our operating system happens to be co-distributed on our source medias, like a RFC, a PDF file for which upstream forgot to provide its LaTeX source or a windows executable, our operating system is still DFSG-free. I use “More fun” in the title of my platform. DFSG-repacking is not fun. It provides no extra freedom, creates nothing, and syphons time and motivation (at least mine). I think that developers who do not go through NEW every month do not realise how long we spend repacking and cut-pasting coypright notices. In the meantime, other distributions innovate. One of my main motivations to stand up for DPL is that we remove all the barriers that contribute to Debian's immobilism. The copyright collection and tarball repacking are, in my opinion, one of them. Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100321145732.ga4...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes: On the contrary, I'm against point (2) of the GR. I do consider our source packages to be part of Debian and hence subject to DFSG. If something in upstream tarball is non-free, I believe we should do repacking (there, we might use a bit more standardization on how we implement get-orig-source in such cases, but that's a different issue). In fact, doing that might even be a way to push our upstream to get rid of those non-free bits from their tarballs as well. In my experience, it definitely is. It can cause some upstream grumbling, but for example the next major version of OpenAFS will be usable without repacking (although I may end up still repacking to delete the very large WINNT directory that isn't used in the Debian build). -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87bpehse9g@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
On Sun, Mar 21 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes: On the contrary, I'm against point (2) of the GR. I do consider our source packages to be part of Debian and hence subject to DFSG. If something in upstream tarball is non-free, I believe we should do repacking (there, we might use a bit more standardization on how we implement get-orig-source in such cases, but that's a different issue). In fact, doing that might even be a way to push our upstream to get rid of those non-free bits from their tarballs as well. In my experience, it definitely is. It can cause some upstream grumbling, but for example the next major version of OpenAFS will be usable without repacking (although I may end up still repacking to delete the very large WINNT directory that isn't used in the Debian build). I think that if Debian wants to still considered to be a part of the open source/free software community, it _has_ to contain the sources of the software. If the source software is a part of Debian (as it should be, in my opinion), the DFSG applies (seems somewhat weasely to try to wriggle our way out of the DFSG otherwise). If we want to change our foundation documents, and remove the awoval to the concept of being 100% free, or to say that Debian, and thus the parts of Debian covered by the DFSG, are just the binary bits, then we can do so via constitutionally approved methods like GR's with appropriate majority requirements. Is this what is being considered? manoj -- Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 4096R/C5779A1C E37E 5EC5 2A01 DA25 AD20 05B6 CF48 9438 C577 9A1C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87y6hll9zv@anzu.internal.golden-gryphon.com
Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
Le Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 02:42:51PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit : On the contrary, I'm against point (2) of the GR. I do consider our source packages to be part of Debian and hence subject to DFSG. If something in upstream tarball is non-free, I believe we should do repacking (there, we might use a bit more standardization on how we implement get-orig-source in such cases, but that's a different issue). In fact, doing that might even be a way to push our upstream to get rid of those non-free bits from their tarballs as well. Hi Stefano, I explained in my GR proposition what led me to conclude that not everything in the original archives distributed usptream is a source for Debian. Let's take a non-free RFC for example, that is not distributed in a binary package and is not touched at build time. Why do you think it is part of the source of the Debian operating system? Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100322004708.ga8...@kunpuu.plessy.org
