On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 06:00:55AM +0100, Stefan Westerfeld wrote:
> Debian isn't shipping KDE. This mail is written under the assumption that
>
> - Debian would like to do so
Personal opinions vary on this, but at least someone in Debian (the person
who maintains the packages currently outside of Debian) wishes for Debian
to. Debian's policy is generally if the maintainer wants to and can do so
(ie, licenses allow it), it can go into the archive under whatever section
the licensing situation would place it..
> - they think there are licensing issues which prevent them from doing so
_I_ think there are licensing issues. Considering my involvement in the
past, that says something. But yes, Debian in general and the
afore-mentioned package mintainer included have agreed there are currently
licensing issues.
> If thats wrong, and you simply don't want to ship KDE (because you for
> instance think it is not pure enough), forget this mail. Simply say so,
> and no more discussion is required.
I don't even want to get into the "pure enough" debate.. Flamewar hell
leads down that path.
> However, assuming it's only a licensing issue, I'd suggest the following:
>
> It seems that in the KDE licensing debates, everybody gets frustrated and
> nothing is moving.
Correct.
> FreeKDE is an lightweight approach to fix these issues. Consisting of a
> simple script, it is supposed to copy those parts of KDE that have
> undoubtful licensing from the cvs tree, and assemble them in a buildable
> fashion. I think this strategy can succeed very well, given that
>
> * somebody takes maintainance of this FreeKDE package
> * it gets included into Debian as soon as possible
This ignores the heart of the issue... That there is a serious problem
with KDE's licensing issues. We cannot claim to be distributing KDE if we
only distribute a small subset of it or even a reasonable subset. KDE has
interdependencies which are going to SERIOUSLY complicate this problem, at
least so far as I know.
> If this happens, you have a good reason if you go to the author of k<foo> and
> ask him whether he could change his license. You can say: if you do so, your
> code will be in debian in two weeks (this is also valid for kde cvs apps
> like konqueror, konsole, kword and such).
Most of them are going to reply "yes, so?" =<
> Thats a much better motivation, than saying: if you do so, your code may be
> included somewhen in Debian, when all licensing issues have been resolved.
> Most people will then answer: "well, that will never happen, so why bother?".
>
> It is only a proof-of-concept, not capable of doing anything more than
> running the window manager and panel (and crash soon ;).
Isn't that the result of being KDE in general? ;>
Gnome seems to have the same issue last time I looked. =D
In general, the idea is perhaps not TOO bad in concept at least, but it
doesn't really address the overall problem and leaves us looking like
we're doing something we aren't really and at the same time giving KDE
another out to fixing the issues: "Even Debian ships KDE now..."
Why do I seem so certain they'll do this? They did it once already--the
very instant RedHat sharted shipping KDE.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian Linux developer
http://tank.debian.net GnuPG key pub 1024D/DCF9DAB3 sub 2048g/3F9C2A43
http://www.debian.org 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3
Oh no, not again.
-- Manoj Srivastava
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