Christian Perrier wrote: > > And isn't another "small cabal" of freeness junkies, who cannot accept > that it is actually possible to work with commercial vendors to assist > them in their way to free software, doing exactly the opposite by > playing words with legal issues ? > Please explain how this helping them on their way to free software. Don't get me wrong, I applaud their contributions to the open source/free software communities (NetBeans, OpenOffice, Gnome contributions, etc). However, I have a hard time understanding how Debian distributing Java, which, judging by all the debate, is still under questionable license terms, will help. In my opinion, a continued refusal to distribute it until it met the required criteria would be much better. As it stands, here is it appears: Sun has gained for Java: - "approval" or "validation" as "free enough" for all Linux distros (remember, Debian is seen as the most restrictive in this regard) - a willing accomplice - a demotivation to find more favorable licensing terms Debian has gained: - lots of people blogging about this whole mess - possible future legal problems (extent is still being sorted out) - something it already had (admins who really wanted Sun's Java could always go to java.sun.com and install it themselves or use java-package) I would regard this situation as Debian having been "played." -Roberto Full disclosure: I am not a DD I am in the NM queue I have posted a few dozen times to debian-legal I am not some sort of legal analyst or expert I think this whole mess is rather absurd Flame away -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
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