Re: Preparation of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 (II)
Steve Langasek wrote:
> > If I understood you correctly, you want me to remove these packages:
>
> > ttf-kochi-mincho
> > ttf-kochi-mincho-naga10
> > ttf-xwatanabe-mincho
> > watanabe-vfont
> > ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic (source ttf-xtt)
> > ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho (source ttf-xtt)
>
> > from the stable distribution due to license problems, right?
>
> > That is possible.
>
> I'm not sure there's any reason to believe that there are licensing
> problems with these fonts.
>
> The official reply from Hitachi on this question, as posted at
> <http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200310/msg00323.html>,
> seems quite unambiguous: they acknowledge that there are no laws on the
> books, in Japan or elsewhere, which give them grounds to claim that
> these fonts infringe their intellectual property rights. Rather, they
> have referenced previous out-of-court settlements as precedent. Unless
> Japanese law is created in a much different manner than it is in the
> rest of the world, the results of out-of-court settlements do not
> constitute legal precedents; they may provide insight into the legal
> counsel's assessment of their chances of winning a suit, but there are
> other factors that contribute to such an assessment besides the letter
> of the law -- most notably, the respective depths of the parties'
> pockets.
>
> I don't believe that Debian should ingratiate itself to corporations who
> throw their weight around to carve out intellectual property without the
> sanction of the courts. Unless and until Hitachi is taking legal action
> against our distributors or users in Japan, I think Debian ought to
> ignore these apparently baseless claims.
So... the situation won't be changed for r2 and we can discuss this
for r3.
Regards,
Joey
--
Never trust an operating system you don't have source for!
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