Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 12:24:38AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 02:06:11PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Huh ? If it would be licenced under the MIT/X11 licence, there is no
> > need for the source code for us to distribute it ?
> 
> I was figuring we'd just disassemble it and call that the source code.
> 
> As long as that's true in practice for us, and we actually treat it
> like de facto source code, adding comments to it and modifying it as
> needed, I don't see a DFSG 2 problem here.

Cool.

> > This would be a good solution. What about the later Apple licence ? 
> 
> If we can get it under the MIT/X11 license it doesn't matter what other
> licenses it's under.  The MIT/X11 license is non-exclusive.

Well, i ask, because apple may be more inclined to use a licence they
have experience with.

> > Notice that the DFSG doesn't cope well with lost source code or lost
> > legal paperstuff needed to assertain (and modify) the licence. As was
> > shown in the case of the ocaml old-bignum case, whose licence ownership
> > was lost in the DEC -> Compaq -> HP mess.
> 
> I don't think the spirit, intent, or letter of DFSG 2 is breached as
> long as we have something that *really is* the source code for us.
> 
> What does violate DFSG 2 is shipping binaries, or obfuscated source, and
> hand-waving it as "Free" because it's the "best we can do", when it's a
> hopeless task for us to substatively modify the work.
> 
> My argument does presume that we have people who are capable of hacking
> up OldWord PowerMac boot sectors, and who proceed to do it to get d-i
> working for those machines.  From personal experience with some of our
> developers, I don't think our ability to do can reasonably be
> questioned.

Nope, just the available time to do so.

> > In this case, would a disclaimer from HP as the potential IP holder be
> > enough for freeing the code, at least until someone else with the said
> > IP papers can come out and claim the copyright ? Especially when there
> > is assumption that such papers where irremedially lost. A nice
> > comparative of this is the AROS project, who were told by Amiga Inc to
> > be infringing the Amiga IP or whatever, but where Amiga Inc was never
> > able to come up with the papers supporting their claim, as it seems that
> > the amiga IP rights got lost somehow in the 10+ proprietary chain.
> > Probably someone left with them in their pocket during that time.
> 
> I don't feel qualified to speak to the ocaml-bignum or AROS cases, and
> which in any case are not relevant to d-i.

nope, they are not.

> I will observe that if the people who claim you're infringing their
> copyrights publicly admit that they can't susbtantiate their claim,
> there's probably not much to worry about.  But I am not a lawyer and
> this is not legal advice.

Yeah, but in the ocaml-old-bignum case, the code was removed from
debian/main and reimplemented upstream, because Bdale told me he
couldn't get hand on the place were the stuff was, or hadn't time for
it, or whatever.

Friendly,

Sven Luther