Re: Debian i386 freeze
On Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 02:35:17PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had been staying out of this debate, but this really got my
> goat (what is the etymology and history of _that_ phrase?).
>
> >>"David" == David Welton <davidw@gate.cks.com> writes:
>
> David> I guess the thing that irks me to some degree is that we seem
> David> to do the 'cover our butt' thing rather than really get to the
> David> bottom of a lot of these legal issues.
>
> You want to take it to a moral level? Morality is a personal
> thing (I would be opposed to KDE on purely moral grounds, but that is
> me). However, there _are_ other issues involved, and liability should
> not be taken lightly.
I did not say moral. I intend "get to the bottom of" in this case as
"resolve it with someone who is a professional in the legal field"
more or less, as neither you nor I, nor anyone else who has spoken to
the issue has, afaik, legal training. I don't know where you see
'moral' in the above statement.
> And why should we really be trying to get to the bottom of
> this for the sake of a non-free piece of software that is not even a
> part of debian (or software that depends on something like that)?
>
> David> It's kind of irritating seeing problems that don't get
> David> resolved,
>
> You just want swift resolution? Fine. Let us just throw out
> KDE and relating things, and poof. Problem resolved. No way can we be
> violating icences if we do not distribute the software in
> contention. And we have a distrivution that is more free.
Once again, where did you see anything about "swift"? Your arguments
are usually quite valid without having to put words in people's
mouths.
I said that things should get resolved to a point where there is not a
doubt as to the *facts* of the case. As you can see by the protracted
argument on just our list, the *facts* do not appear to be clear. Or
maybe I should say, the correct legal interpretation of them. We do,
I suppose have the facts, but, presumably, given these facts, a
professional in the legal field would be able to draw some sort of
more or less certain conclusion from them, instead of speculating.
As I did indeed say, the easy way out is to throw out the offending
programs. I also said that, in this case, my desire to see what is
"correct" is greater than my indifference to non-free software. I can
understand that not everyone feels this way. But ignoring a problem
is not always the best solution. For us, it may be, given our limited
resources. However, I wished to express my discontent with this
solution of somewhat limited scope.
> David> and, because of the legal guessing of some programmers, we end
> David> up doing one thing, whereas others do another (Calder and SUSE
> David> will distribute KDE).
>
> So, the whole world is not identical, and there are
> differences. Your point?
No, laws are laws (I suppose we could argue that point, but that is
completely beyond the scope of Debian.) I am talking about whether we
can distribute KDE legally. Some people feel we cannot. Other people
are doing it. I don't really see how both of these can be valid
points of view, given existing laws. Perhaps different judges would
interpret things differently, but I *am not a lawyer* and therefore
will not speculate on the issue. I think only someone associated with
the legal profession would be able to tell us with more certainty
which side is correct, and, how concrete their position is.
> David> I don't like seeing problems go unanswered like this. I wish
> David> we could do more to determine things with certainty one way or
> David> another.
>
> Yup, and I would like to end world hunger, global warming, and
> strife. Unless you get a lawyer for every jurisdiction we may be
> sued in, and they are sure of the stances, you shall never have
> this.
How do you know? Do you know which laws govern efforts such as ours?
Do you know how it relates to international laws? Do you know how it
relates to us as individuals as opposed to Debian as a whole? This is
my whole point. It is frustrating to not have this information
available to act upon, and thus, be default, we have no choice.
> Why are we doing this for something that is not part of Debian in
> the first place?
This, as I said in my first email, is a fairly valid argument.
> Also, I like my house. I do not like KDE enough to even dream
> of putting it at risk in a law suit.
I think the lawsuit thing is a bit of a bogeyman. However, if we risk
doing the 'wrong thing', and are not sure, the obvious solution is to
err on the side of caution. That is the rational thing to do.
However, my curious side would like to know what is "correct".
> David> but.. in a lot of these cases, my desire to resolve problems
> David> wins out over my dislike of non-free stuff...
>
> As I said, resolution is easy -- drop the KDE packages. They
> are not part of Debian.
>
> The problem comes from trying to deal with things that are
> borderline free (borderline enough for us to be having a raging
> discussion about this) for the sake of our users.
Yep, exactly. As I said, we are not qualified to pass judgement, in
most cases. This is frustrating.
I don't really see what we are arguing about...
--
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org
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