Subject: Bug#251983: libcwd: QPL license is non-free; package should not be in main
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.debian.devel.bugs.rc
Date: 2004-06-01 10:42:29 GMT (5 years, 36 weeks, 1 day, 9 hours and 42 minutes ago)
also sprach Carlo Wood <carlo <at> alinoe.com> [2004.06.01.0344 +0200]: > Which are? 6c and 'Amsterdam' > Yeah, I don't need that - but I am not a laywer so I am not going > to change the license. The QPL is a well-known license and when > I change anything in it, I am not allowed anymore to call it 'QPL' > - that will confuse a lot of people and might seriously reduce the > number of people that use - and thus benefit from - my work. I don't think you have to change the licence. You shouldn't. You just make a statement after the licence with which you explicitly undo anything put forth in 6c, and with which you explicitly state that you are not hardcoding the city court of Amsterdam to be the one and only place of legal battle. If you want, I can discuss this one debian-legal and let you know the best procedure and wording. > You have no idea how little I am interested in laws, licenses and > courts; I do ;^> > but if debian only wants to distributes source code that IBM can > use internally at large without returning a copy of the bug fixes > they applied in order to use it (so that these can be put back > into the debian release) then by all means, refuse to include > libcwd. I think that's a correct way of putting it, but it's not the way one would look at it. Debian doesn't force IBM to return anything to the community. But Debian's philosophy encourages everyone who uses it to do so. I would say that, in fact, yes, there is a trust basis here, and it probably won't hold stand in front of court, but do we need to secure ourselves against all possible legal issues in the open source world? I am a little idealistic, I acknowledge that. > What means DFSG? http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines > The debian distribution is available to the general public. Yes, but the social contract states that people may derive from it all that they want. We don't put limitations on the derived works. It could be closed or open, modified or not. This is largely how the QPL messes with us. > But - why have a license at all when you cannot enforce it if ever > the need arrises? No - it would be totally impossible for me to > travel to another country or defend my rights when it has to be > settled in some alien court with alien rules. Yes, I know. > If someone feels he has to break the license - then he has to face > the consequences that his attempt to do so will be judged by a judge > from MY country. I see no reason to make it easier for people who > attempt to screw the license. I agree, though it's not going to be easy. Say I screwed the licence. What are you going to do now? An international suit? > But of course, the USERS of debian might want to not keep > themselfs to the licenses - in which case it would become valid. > But why would "debian" care about such users or what they have to > endure? Because Debian's users are first priority and we don't care what they do or how they use the code. I am not sure I have an answer why we categorically support those foul types, but by paragraph 5 of the DFSG, we don't discriminate. > If you think that your users should be reasonably ABLE to break > the license then the REAL problem is that you do not agree with > the license, and not with where the court has to be settled. I agree with your motivations of the licence. In as such, it's not DFSG-unfree. The court issue is a problem. And 6c. Both of which are not needed. So if you override them, it should be fine. -- Please do not CC me when replying to lists; I read them! .''`. martin f. krafft <madduck <at> debian.org> : :' : proud Debian developer, admin, and user `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing a system Invalid/expired PGP subkeys? Use subkeys.pgp.net as keyserver!