Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian
On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 00:53, Martin Pool wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:22:36 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:25:39PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> >> "We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
> >> change what we like" is not a good message to send. Even if you don't
> >
> > Thankfully, Debian isn't sending this message.
>
> For me (as an author whose software is in Debian) this is exactly how
> it comes across.
I am an author as well, and the message did not come across to me as you
have stated, but hey, to each his own.
> Some people here apparently delight in pissing off upstream authors
> who object to the way their software is modified. There are plenty of
> posts saying that Debian can do what it likes, and precious few
> acknowledging that Hans ought to have any say in what is done to the
> software he wrote.
I do not understand your accusations here. No one stated what you said,
and no one has delibaretly attempted to upset Hans. Quite the contrary,
actually. I have seen _several_ people attempting to find a compromise,
but the issue isnt in the credits anymore, as you seem to think. The
real issue, as stated several times, is whether or not the license that
reiserfsprogs uses is distributable or DFSG-free. The problem stems
from the notion that we are not allowed to remove those credits under
the terms of the license.
> Authors have a moral right (and a legal one in some places) not to
> have their work mutilated.
I do not consider removing 20-something lines of output from a program
whose purpose is to create a filesystem mutilating it. By contrast,
mkfs.ext[2,3] and mkfs.xfs do not output such messages, simply the
status of the task at hand. As an author, I can see how these messages
severely hinder usability. They would be more appropriate in a CREDITS
or AUTHORS file.
> I personally would not have put such a large and informal notice in my
> software, but perhaps Hans has good reasons, such as promising the
> sponsors that they would be prominently acknowledged. (That seems to
> be required by some research grants.)
Prominently does not necessarily imply causing the program to be
unusable. A one line message stating "This program was funded my
multiple sources; see the file CREDITS" would suffice.
> Debian should not stomp all over the author's intentions if it is
> reasonably avoidable. The alternatives do not seem to have been
> adequately explored.
The authors intentions are not always the correct ones, nor those in
agreement with the project. Debian is an distribution, it owes a
service to its users; correcting usability issues is a responsibility
Debian has towards its users.
> > > It ought to be obvious that removing a author/sponsor notice would be
> > > likely to offend.
> > It's not obvious. Removing a sponsorship notice is something I'd do
> > without a second thought; it's nothing more than advertisement and
> > it's just as annoying to me as a banner ad.
>
> I say "it ought to be obvious", because Hans put the message in there
> intending it to be prominent, rather than (say) putting it in a doc
> file. It is reasonable to assume that he cared about putting this
> message in front of everyone who used it. If you can't understand why
> removing it would annoy him then I really doubt your ability to
> cooperate with other people.
I am really doubting your ability to cooperate with others; but that is
irrelevant to the topic at hand. These notices, regardless of Hans'
intentions, belong in a file, not the output of mkreiserfs.
> --
> Martin
>
Mike
Reply to: