Bug#316487: debian-installer-manual: Missing copyright credit: Karsten M. Self for section C.4

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org>]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 11:58:07PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Sure. That's fairly equivalent to (a).

Just in case I wasn't clear, the point was that the fix for past stable
releases, and the fix for unstable and the next release, are unrelated;
it's reasonable to do entirely different things, as long as the
violation is fixed in all cases.  Your choices were listing fixes
for stable and fixes for unstable side-by-side.

> > This seems like "If you remove my work from your current version, I'll
> > sue you for your violation in the last version".  I hope you can
> > understand why I don't believe that arrangement is acceptable--it's
> > no different than "if you don't give me $100, I'll sue you for your
> > violation in the last version".
> 
> Yes. And?

So you think it's acceptable to have a work in main, whose license is
"if you're Debian, you're never allowed to remove this work, or I'll
sue you for an unrelated, already-fixed[1] past violation"?  I don't
like throwing around overly loaded words, but I can't find any word
short of "extortion" that accurately represents what this seems to be.

(FWIW, I did recently criticise Bruce Perens for his use of the same
word, but that was due to opening the conversation with it, right in
the subject.)

> Which bit of "We've been knowingly violating a license for over 2 years,
> and so we're the bad guys" is unclear here?

Debian has offered to correct it, in a perfectly acceptable and legitimate
manner.  In my viewpoint, (a) is not wrong in any ethical or moral way
(legally, I don't know and would prefer not to guess); coercing Debian
maintainers to include a work in future releases against their will and
judgement is.


[1] assuming that the stable release gets fixed soon, of course

-- 
Glenn Maynard