This one time, at band camp, Glenn Maynard said: > On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 11:58:07PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > 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. Do you really not understand actual license issues? There is, as I understand it, a currently released work, which knowingly incorporates a substantial amount of Karsten's work, and violates his license in doing so. This is not some hypothetical case that is being beaten to death on -legal about whether some stipulation or other is free enough, this is a real case of Debian violating a license. The past violation is not fixed. That is the only important thing here. If maintainers want to do a blackbox rewrite so as to avoid the onerous condition of adding the line 'some parts written by Karsten Self', then that is up to them to deal with for future releases. That is not the issue here, and if you think it is, you've missed the boat. > > 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. You are wrong on two points as far as I can see: Debian has not offered to correct it. What has been offered is excision from future releases. This does nothing for present and past releases. Karsten is not attempting to coerce anyone to do anything. He has simply stated fairly straightforward facts. Debian has been violating his license for several years; he would like it corrected in released works. If Debian continues to use his works, they should abide by his license for future releases. If, for some obscure reason, the maintainers feel it is easier to rewrite four pages of text than properly credit a long term contributor to the Debian project, then that is their prerogative, but it is not relevant to the discussion at hand. Also, rather simply put, I think we would be doing badly by the project as a whole if we were to start telling contributors that we would rather excise their work and rewrite it rather than acknowledge a contribution. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : sgran@debian.org | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature