Bill Unruh <unruh@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
Agreed, both sides have to come to the conclusion that they are operating
legally. On the plus side, Schilling would like to have his software
distributed in the distros. He is also strongly of the opinion that there is
no legal impediment to that happening. Debian is of the opinion that there IS
an impediment. It is not that Schilling recognizes the impediment and refuses
to clear it, it is that he does not believe that there is one. Thus both sides
Well several lawyers have been asked for legal advise.
The Sun legal department did a full legal review of the cdrtools source
bewteen August 2008 and October 2008. No problem was found.
A German lawyer who is specialized on OpenSOurce hast been asked and he also
does not see a problem.
Eben Moglen has been asked and he also did see no problem.
Note that any laywer as a first reply confirms that the claim from the former
Debian package maintainer "Eduard Bloch" who initiated the attacks against me
and my software in May 2004 is complete nonsense. There is of course no problem
to use a CDDL licensed build system to compile a GPLd project.
For the rest of claims seen in the net, it is important to understand that you
need to find a single interpratation of the GPL that is not in conflict with
- The Copyright
- The OpenSource definition http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
- and that does not make OSS distributions illegal
All theories from people who claim that there is a problem with the original
cdrtools I did see, are either in conflict with the Copyright law, would make
the GPL a clearly nonfree license acording to http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
or would disallow to distribute e.g. Linux together with X.
The GPL is a "work" based license (see Copyright law
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/index.html) and with a single exception,
the rules of the GPL end at the "work limit". The single exception is that
if you combine a GPLd work with an independent work under a different license,
you need to distribute "complete source" in case you distribute binaries.
If you did try to disallow GPLd programs to link against independent non-GPL
libraries, you would make _any_ GPLd program undistributable in binary form.
without legal impediment). Now the question is, is there some way of clearing
out the underbrush so that both sides agree that there is no impediment.
(Note that the chances of any legal action being taken by anyone with respect
to cdrtools is miniscule. So it is not fear that stands in the way, but a
"legal quibble".
There is a high risk that people, who are involved with distributing the fork,
will be sued. There is no risk to distribute the original software.
Will you buy the maintainer all kinds of scsi burners so they can test
each? I myself and several others have used debians cdrecord with scsi
just fine so the bug must be some quirk of that specific config. You
can never forsee all those quirks.
Look I never said that maintaining is easy. It is not. And
Schilling has proven himself willing to do it, to buy "all kinds of scsi
burners" or get ahold of them, and make it work. That is worth a HUGE amount.
Let me add that Debian did verify that nobody is willing and able to fix the
bugs in wodim or genisoimage.
And here we have to disagree. I don't see Schilling moving one iota
from his position and trying to compromise with someone so set in
stone is just wasted.
Well, I think there is the problem. This has come down to personal issues, not
legal or technical. Everyone is so dug into their positions that they simply
spend time lobbing grenades at each other, rather then trying to work through
the problem. Yes, Schilling is "difficult" but by now, so is Debian. The
amount of childish vituperation that has been seen in this discussion mostly
but not all coming from the Debian side is pretty disgusting.
The whole dispute has been initated by a former Debian package maintainer named
"Eduard Bloch". This person created a lot of FUD and personal offense under the
name "Debian", he stopped all activitied on the fork on May 6th 2007 and sice
then advtertizes for nerolinux.
The incorrect clains against me and my software intruduced by "Eduard Bloch"
are still distributed by Debian. The current state of "Eduard Bloch" at Debian
is "suspended". Isn't the party that initiated the dispute responsible for
apologizing for creating the dispute?
In any case, the original cdrtools is perfectly free software
- cdrecord is 100% CDDL
- cdda2wav is 100% CDDL and uses an independent library under LGPL
- readcd is 100% CDDL
- rscsi is 100% CDDK
- scgcheck is 100% CDDL
- scgskeleton is 100% CDDL
- mkisofs is 100% GPL and uses independent libraries under CDDL
It is obvious that the people who are responsible for the fact that Debian
distributes "wodim" instead of cdrecord are not interested in legal facts as
cdrecord is 100% CDDL.
It has been proven by many people that wodim is full of bugs and in case that
Debian continues to distribute wodim, Debian ignores the demands from Debian
users and the legal problems in the fork. It is time for Debian to move in
order to verify that Debian is still supporting OpenSource.
When will the state of "Eduard Bloch" be changed from "suspended" to "thrown
out"? This would not harm Debian as he does not do any work, but it would
indicate that Debian as a project is still part of the OSS community.
J�>