Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> Shortly after creation this stalled however as nobody created
> summaries anymore, probably because for many discussions it proved
> to be difficult if not imopossible to summarise many of the discussions
> without either reproducing the entire discussion or to have an
> equally lengthy discussion about the summary...
My view is that the earlier stage of the summary drafting
process was used as a stick to beat debian-legal towards
firey heat death, so contributors simply stopped making
them. Maybe a new and totally uncontroversial licence will
come along, but anything which has DFSG-related questions
left open will almost always have some supporters and some
detractors, so not suit the red/green judgement.
> Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again
> until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the
> work of debian-legal.
I support deleting the summaries. I think that page would
be good for a general description of how debian-legal works,
linking to unofficial documents as they are prepared and official
documents on other parts of the site. I had intended to write
this before, but I am still not up-to-date with wml.
Here is my suggested text:
<p>This site presents the opinion of debian-legal contributors on how
certain licenses follow the
<a href="$(HOME)/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software
Guidelines</a> (DFSG). Most of these opinions were formed in
discussions on the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/";>\
debian-legal mailing list</a> in response to questions from
potential package maintainers or licensors. We welcome
enquiries from maintainers considering particular licenses, but
we encourage most maintainers to use one of the common licenses:
GPL, LGPL, BSD or Artistic.</p>
<p>Software packaged for debian is normally classified into four
categories. There is free software (main), non-free software
(non-free), free software which depends on some non-free
software (contrib) and software which cannot be redistributed
(not included).
<a href="$(DOC)/debian-policy/ch-archive.html">Debian Policy section 2</a>
explains exactly how the DFSG
are applied to the archive. If in doubt, maintainers are
asked to email debian-legal about licenses, including the text
of any new license into the body of the email.</p>
<p>debian-legal is advisory. The actual decision-makers are the
ftpmasters and the package maintainers. However, if one cannot
convince most of the generally liberal debian-legal contributors,
it's probably not clear that the software follows the DFSG.</p>
<p>Lists are maintained by the
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html";>Free Software
Foundation</a> (FSF) and the
<a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html";>Open Source
Initiative</a> (OSI). Please note however, that
the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than
licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations. It
is possible to have a package containing software under a
"free" license with some other aspect that makes it non-free.
Sometimes, debian-legal comments on a license in abstract, not
applied to any particular software. While these discussion
can suggest possible problems, often no firm answers can be
reached until some specific software is examined.</p>
<p>You may contact debian-legal if you have questions or comments
about these summaries.</p>
<p>Licenses currently found in debian main include:</p>
<ul>
<li>GNU General Public License (common)</li>
<li>GNU Lesser General Public License (common)</li>
<li>GNU Library General Public License (common)</li>
<li>Modified BSD License (common)</li>
<li>Perl Artistic license (common)</li>
<li>Apache License</li>
<li>MIT/X11-style licenses</li>
<li>zlib-style licenses</li>
<li>LaTeX Project Public License</li>
<li>Python Software Foundation License</li>
<li>Ruby's License</li>
<li>Glasgow Haskell Compiler License</li>
<li>PHP License</li>
<li>W3C Software Notice and License</li>
<li>OpenSSL License</li>
<li>Sleepycat License</li>
<li>Common UNIX Printing System License Agreement</li>
<li>vhf Public License</li>
<li>"No problem Bugroff" license</li>
<li>public domain (not a license, strictly speaking)</li>
</ul>
<p>If you use one of these licenses,
please try to use the latest version and edit no more than necessary,
unless indicated otherwise.
Licenses marked (common) can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses
on a debian system.</p>
<p>Licenses currently found in the non-free archive section include:</p>
<ul>
<li>NVIDIA Software License</li>
<li>SCILAB License</li>
<li>Limited Use Software License Agreement</li>
<li>Non-Commercial License</li>
<li>FastCGI / Open Market License</li>
<li>LaTeX2HTML License</li>
<li>Open Publication License</li>
<li>Free Document Dissemination Licence</li>
<li>AT&T Open Source License</li>
<li>Apple Public Source License</li>
<li>Aladdin Free Public License</li>
<li>Generic amiwm License (an XV-style license)</li>
<li>Digital License Agreement</li>
<li>Moria/Angband license</li>
<li>Unarj License</li>
<li>id Software License</li>
<li>qmail terms</li>
</ul>
<p>Please do not upload software under these licenses to the
main archive.</p>
<p>Additionally, some software is not distributable (for example,
has no licence at all), even in non-free.</p>
<h2>Work in Progress</h2>
<p>For help with interpreting the DFSG, you should check the
<a href="http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html";>DFSG FAQ</a>
that answers some common questions about the DFSG and how to analyse
software.</a>
<p>Manoj Srivasta has drafted
<a href="http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html";>a
position statement about the FDL</a>
which is yet to be voted upon.</p>
<p>Evan Prodromu has been delegated to work with Creative Commons
to resolve DFSG-related problems with some of their licenses, as
<a href="http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html";>summarised
on Evan's page</a> and
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00031.html";>reported
on debian-legal</a>.</p>
--
MJ Ray (slef), K.Lynn, England, email via http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
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