Bug#509287: at least move to non-free
Speaking as the up-stream afio maintainer: I don't expect that I or the
original afio author can come up with new information that would make the
license situation more clear to the Debian community. So it is basically
up to the Debian community to make a choice how they want to apply
their labels 'free' and 'nonfree' with respect to afio.
The issue has been open for some 2 years now, so maybe it is not
unreasonable to indefinitely postpone the legal/social contract discussion
about what these labels mean for afio, and make a choice based on purely
pragmatic considerations instead.
If there are benefits to end users in moving it to non-free, over the
current situation, that sounds good to me.
BTW I am hoping to make a new up-stream maintenance release before the
end of 2012. No promises however.
Cheers,
Koen.
On Wed, 28 Dec 2011, Michael Prokop wrote:
> * Dean Townsley [Son Apr 24, 2011 at 05:52:00 -0500]:
>
> > This seems a very sad situation. Is it possible to move afio to non-free
> > and then open a never-ending bug that says it should be moved to main? At
> > least then it will be easier to install.
>
> > It appears that a license change is nigh unworkable, if not actually
> > impossible. But it does not appear that anything else will satisfy the
> > detractors at this point.
>
> > This is so sad because by both text and testament the license was
> > intended to allow distribution in both commercial and non-commercial
> > collections. But this certainly isn't the only case where an author
> > didn't try hard enough to give their work away.
>
> Ping, any news from the maintainer or anyone else interested in
> resolving this licensing issue to get afio into wheezy?
>
> regards,
> -mika-
>
Reply to: