Re: Sun Java available from non-free
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 09:41:27AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
> > > Is there even any dispute that the DLJ indemnity seeks to overturn all
> > > the "no warranty" statements in debian and leave the licensee liable
> > > for the effects of everything in our operating system?
> >
> > If you're actually claiming that's what it does, then I guess there is.
>
> Cool. Where is this effect of sections 2(f)(i) and 14 disputed? I've
> seen repeated claims that we're not liable for Sun's changes and downstream
> changes, but not upstream changes of parts of the Operating System.
Really, how is that any relevant? Can you come up with a real-life
scenario (as in, something which actually occurred) where a change to,
say, glibc or something similar made some other application break in
such a way that it would no longer behave as documented?
I could imagine a situation where compiler bugs would make an
application misbehave, but that doesn't apply to a binary-only non-free
piece of code.
I could imagine a situation where library ABI changes break the
application in such a way that it would no longer even _start_, but I
can hardly imagine that people would want to sue anyone over that --
unless suddenly java would no longer start while they're running stable,
but I don't foresee that ABI changes happening in stable (do you?)
I could imagine a bug in glibc having an effect on every application
which tries to make use of the particular buggy library call.
What I cannot imagine is a case where an upstream change would result in
only Sun's Java to break rather than a whole bunch of applications
(so they would most likely be noticed before the release), and/or to do
so on Debian only, rather than on every Linux distribution out there;
and it would seem that for any case where the effects are much wider
than just Debian, it can reasonably be argued that the problems are, not
under our control, which would free us from the burden of having to
idemnify Sun.
If I'm misguided, I'd be happy to be enlightened. But I don't think I
am.
--
Fun will now commence
-- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
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