On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 08:16:14PM +0100, Dariush Pietrzak wrote: > > Linus is a nice guy, but he doesn't set policy for Debian -- certainly > > not with regard to the legal risks we are or are not willing to take. > I don't get it. This is not about a risk of getting caught or whatever. > This is about being honest etc to fellow programmers. > When I use someone else's code it's natural to respect their wishes. I > expect the same from others that may use my code. > And those wishes are expressed with licences(unfortunately), don't like > the licence - don't use it. Write something better and put it on less > restrictive licence. In the present case, I'm afraid it *is* about exposing ourselves to legal risks. We are discussing the possibility that mplayer upstream are themselves violating someone's license; if we ourselves believe we are doing everything according to the programmer's wishes, but upstream has already violated the license, we may be liable for illegally distributing the software. Remember also that not all code we distribute is owned by programmers -- much of it is owned by companies -- and some of these owners may even be hostile to Debian in spite of their license choice. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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