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Re: cdrtools



On 10742 March 1977, Joerg Schilling wrote:

Reply-To and M-f-T set to my address, whoever answers please respect
this and let this thread die on -devel, its the wrong medium for this
discussion, thank you.

> I am sorry, but I cannot believe that you like to make serious proposal
> with the text you wrote.

Do you believe anything thats not written by you is serious?

> Let me make a proposal that makes sense for now and the future:
> 1)	Throw out Eduard Bloch. He has been the biggest problem for Debian
> 	in the past years. Find a new maintainer with the following properties:

I know that you cant work with him (and he with you).

> 2)	Update to a recent cdrtools source, do not hide interesting 
> 	new features from Debian users and (this may be even more important to
> 	Linux users) workarounds for recent Linux kernel 
> 	self-incompatibilities. 

You combine CDDL and GPL, and that doesnt work, the two are
incompatible. The CDDL is intended to be GPL incompatible. If you
dont believe that - even people from Sun, like Simon Phipps and Danese
Cooper (now working at Intel, but one of the authors of CDDL) are aware
of the incompatibility of the two licenses, and Simon and Danese also
said at this years Debian Conference that this is intended. (We had both
Simon and Danese there, talking with us about different things including
the CDDL). They stated that the GPL incompatibility is *part of the
design of the CDDL*

If you dont believe that please watch [1] (or [2] if you prefer an mpeg over an
ogg). Skip to minute 13 if you dont want to hear all of it, as not everything
is interesting for this topic here. Then skip to minute 27 as this is is
the more interesting part for the incompatibility, where Danese
basically says that they built the CDDL following the Mozilla license
*because* it is incompatible with the GPL..

[1] http://debian-meetings.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2006/debconf6/theora-small/2006-05-14/tower/OpenSolaris_Java_and_Debian-Simon_Phipps__Alvaro_Lopez_Ortega.ogg

[2] http://debian-meetings.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2006/debconf6/mpeg1-pal/2006-05-14/tower/OpenSolaris_Java_and_Debian-Simon_Phipps__Alvaro_Lopez_Ortega.mpeg

[3] http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/bios/bios-phipps.html

And if thats not enough, its not only Debian or Sun stating it, its also
FSF, which you can read on http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
- the relevant text there is:

--8<------------------------schnipp------------------------->8---
Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; it has
some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. It
requires that all attribution notices be maintained, while the GPL only
requires certain types of notices. Also, it terminates in retaliation
for certain aggressive uses of patents. So, a module covered by the GPL
and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We
urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.

Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term "intellectual
property"
--8<------------------------schnapp------------------------->8---

There is something else non-free, or at least problematic, in your
cdrtools tarball, taken from AN-2.01.01a09:
Libscg:
-       Changed from GPL to CDDL
        This code may only be used together with other code that is
        under an approved OpenSource license, see
        http://www.opensource.org/.

That's in my understanding at least *very* problematic. And goes against
CDDL3.4 which says "You may not offer or impose any terms on any Covered
Software in Source Code form that alters or restricts the applicable
version of this License or the recipients rights hereunder." (The rest
of it talks about "warranty, support, indemnity or liability", which is
irrelevant. The thing is that 3.6 allows me to use the CDDL licensed
work with anything else I want to do, as long as I "make sure the
requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Software."
So, your added statement makes it incompatible with the license shown
*and* also with DFSG 5/6, as I may want to combine it with something
commercial, following the license rules for the libscg part but not
using an OSI license for my software.

Another thing with CDDL is §3.3, which is similar to invariant sections
of GFDL and one of the reasons why the FSF considers it GPL incompatible
as cited above - and the GFDL is not allowed in Debian with such a
restriction. Also the choice-of-venue is a nice cost bomb.

> 3)	Remove the unneeded Debian changes as the unmodified original source
> 	does not need any changes in order to work correctly.

We wouldnt have them if there wouldnt have been a situation where
someone needed it. You know, this is what free software is about - the
right to change a software if it doesnt work for you.

> 4)	If someone at Debian likes to work on enhancements, make sure that
> 	these changes are done in a way that does not contradict the current
> 	planned behavior and make sure that the quality of the code is 
> 	sufficient to allow integreation. Read the file:
> 	ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/CONTRIBUTING> 	and follow the
> 	instructions in that file.

Feel free to plan in whatever direction you want to go. It is our task
to either follow that with our patches or to lose.
And note that our cdrecord always followed your request to clearly mark
that its modified and the user should not bother you with problems.

> 5)	Find someone to read the original GPL text in depth who did not yet
> 	read the wrong FSF GPL FAQ. Let this person be prepared and willing
> 	to have a serious fact based discussion in case that there are still
> 	any issues to discuss.

Wrong FSF GPL Faq, You know that they are the authors and the FAQ is
their help for others on how to interpret it? That's like someone saying
"you (Jörg S.) dont know cdrecord", i hope you realize that?

> 	Try to accept that the CDDL is a first class OS license and treat it
> 	in the same open way as you treat the GPL and the BSDl.

Try to accept that not everyone sees the world with your eyes. In it
itself it looks like a free license that needs a deep inspection for
every single software that wants to use it and wants to get into Debian
- but that doesnt mean it is usable everywhere.

> 7)	Finally: learn that I am spending a lot time on cdrtools and on my other
> 	OSS activities.

And that's a reason to turn everyone who does not agree with you into the
bad evil troll?

> 8)	Understand that all my software is highly portable and that it is not
> 	acceptable to chage it in a way that make them behave different on
> 	different platforms. 

You claim that it is free software. From every definition of free
software that I heard up to now all had at least one common point - the
right to modify it.

> 9)	Help me with defending against silly artificial limitations in the Linux
> 	kernel that makes life on Linux hard.

No. Whatever you like or not with the kernel is completly uninteresting
for me. Thats your fight, I have my own ones.


So, if you dont want someone to fork it, how about a dual-license of it?

I kindly ask you to use a dual licensing for your cdrtools package,
using the CDDL and the GPL (or another, not GPL incompatible, free
license), so people can choose what license they want to use with the
code. Otherwise I unfortunately would have to be the first one to really
start a fork, and thats something I dont really want to do.


-- 
bye Joerg
[...]
While Debian is certainly about beer, and in some cases may even be
about free beer, Debian is mainly about free speech.

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