Re: CeCILL again...
On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 11:46:17AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Your requirement that you be able to understand the license terms is
> perfectly reasonable. That does not mean Debian should have that
> requirement. Consider this: it is also a perfectly reasonable
Debian should not require that Debian be able to understand license
terms?
I just don't believe that having one or two "trusted" people fluent in
a language is a substitute for the debian-legal list, where we have an
entire list of such people. Debian is not capable of exercising the
level of licensing caution it attempts to maintain, with licenses written
in languages other than English.
> requirement that you be able to read the source of all the software you
> use, to ensure that it does not take undesirable actions. This might
> well cause you to avoid using software in programming languages you
> don't understand, or with comments and variable names in languages you
> don't understand. Nevertheless, such software is still Free.
If Debian can't deterine with confidence that a work is legal and DFSG-free
to distribute, it doesn't distribute.
Debian doesn't have a similar policy with source: if a work is written
in a strange programming language that only the upstream author and the
package maintainer can comprehend, it's not going to be removed from the
archive (as long as it really is source). This isn't the same, and isn't
treated the same, as licensing.
I also fear the general case, where a notable percentage of software in
the archive has licenses which are only binding in a random language, and
it becomes unreasonable to avoid that software. Currently, a fluent English
speaker with some background in reading licenses should be able to understand
/usr/share/doc/*/copyright (if d-legal can't make sense of an English
license, it probably doesn't belong in the archive, either); that would break
down.
--
Glenn Maynard
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