Re: debian-legal review of licenses

[Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@pathname.com>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:

>> What I was saying that if advance approval was the practice,
 
> Advance approval will never happen in any form that I think you'd find
> useful. If we "advance approved" something it would mean that we cound
> not act if we later discovered a non-free facet of it that we'd missed
> originally. We don't want to paint ourselves into a corner that way.

I wasn't asking for anything binding, maybe advance approval is not
quite the right word.  Obviously, a patent or some other problem could
easily chuck some piece of software into non-free.  I also wasn't asking
for a formal certification program like OSI.  Finally, license approval
does not imply software approval.  The decision as to whether a piece of
software is non-free is going to be more restrictive than just whether
or not it is DFSG compliant, but that's why I was only asking for better
assurance, not absolute assurance.

Better assurance that Debian will find a license acceptable when applied
to software and a coordinated way for Debian to provide feedback on
licenses under development means that Debian can have a greater impact
on licenses under development and much less confusing and delayed
feedback process.

Maybe the place to start is just coordinated feedback in a timely and
organized capacity.

Daniel