Re: Outdated GNU config (config.{sub,guess}) and autotools-dev
On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Steve Langasek wrote:
>...
> > First you say there is no violation. Then you say that one woul have to
> > proof that there is a violation. Now you say that if one has proved that
> > there is a violation, the proof itself makes it possible to "retroactive"
> > comply with the license. This may work for a school boys home page, but for
> > Debian it is not a good foundation to stay on.
>
> Nothing retroactive about it. If such an archive exists and is accessible to
> the parties involved in the suit, it's possible to comply with the terms of
> the GPL, prior to any suit taking place. If the archive does not exist, or is
> not accessible to the parties involved in the lawsuit, then it would not be
> possible to prove in a court of law that a violation took place.
>...
This sounds like
"I don't care whether I ciolate the license or not. there won't be a
lawsuit and if there's one I hope they can't proof that I'm guilty."
Sorry, but we (Debian) were always proud of respecting the copyright of
programs even when it wasn't easy (e.g. KDE).
First, I do see a (very small) legal risk. Imagine e.g. the case that
someone evil writes a program, someone packages this program for Debian,
and then the author starts a lawsuit because his copyright was violated.
Second (and more important) it would be very bad for the reputation of
Debian GNU/Linux if we would start to violate the copyright of some
programs.
> Steve Langasek
cu
Adrian
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