Re: Processed: Forwarding to the technical committee
Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Processed: Forwarding to the technical committee"):
> I've gotten myself subscribed to pkg-cdrtools-devel and I would like
> to quote Joerg Schilling:
>
> Firstly, at the start of a large thread:
> [stuff]
So, analysis:
It seems clear that Joerg Schilling has a very deviant understanding
of the GPL. While the revocability or otherwise of the GPL is perhaps
not entirely clear, it _is_ clear that after we have understood that
Joerg doesn't necessarily mean what he says when he applies the GPL to
his work - and indeed has a history of contradicting it later - we are
_not_ safe in relying on Schilling's GPL grant for legal protection.
Unless we can come to a clear agreement with Joerg S where he actually
promises to stick to a licence this time, we are unsafe relying on any
of his licence grants. Certainly him claiming to apply the GPL to new
code doesn't mean what we hope it means because he has explicitly
claimed otherwise !
cdrtools will (with regret) have to be removed from Debian forthwith.
It could be reinstated if we can come to an agreement with Joerg S
where in return (for example) for us renaming things he promises not
to complain about any modifications we choose to make. We need this
promise because of his history of complaining that our modifications
are violations of his licence. One our modifications would have to be
the replacement of the build system (unless we can get him to
re- or dual-licence it GPL).
I think we can safely take and use the source for mkisofs and anything
else with significant non-JS contributions.
Do you think it might be helpful if someone tried phoning up Joerg
Schilling and trying to negotiate ? Email discussion seems to have
been causing some difficulty.
Ian.
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