Re: Is NPL DFSG complient or not?
Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> writes:
> The NPL's requirement for keeping old, broken versions around for
> months after they have been superseded may also be too onerous for it
> to qualify as "free".
How so? I don't agree.
Personally, I consider it the package maintainer's duty to comply with
license minutae, not Debian's. I'm positioned to offer every version
of some MPL'd s/w by virtue of CVS. Since I can do that, I can comply
with the license. Therefore Debian is in compliance with the license.
Therefore, the package can go in "main".
> In this case, we have a good reason for dealing with that topic: the
> NPL will require us to allocate disk space and mirror space for
> versions that we don't want to keep, and will require us to make
> exceptions to our archive management process to deal with the NPL'd
> packages.
> (If we decide to follow it, that is. We already break the GPL's
> source distribution requirements for similar reasons, by keeping
> only the newest source even if we still distribute older binaries
> for some architectures.)
Again, I consider it the package maintainer's job, as the literal
party modifying the code, to deal with the details of license
compliance. If I as a package maintainer am able and willing to offer
source access to old versions in compliance with the license, why
should Debian stop me?
I agree with you that I wish the source release clause didn't exist,
but, hey. Oh well.
--
.....A. P. Harris...apharris@onShore.com...<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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