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Re: Packaging text licenses



On Sun, 15 Dec 2019 14:25:47 +0100 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

[...]
> As others in this thread have pointed out, Debian explicitly omits 
> classifying license fulltexts as "free software" or "non-free software".

Frankly speaking, I cannot find a message in this thread where others
pointed out that license texts are not software.

But anyway...

> 
> As I understand it, you personally classify license fulltexts as 
> "non-free software" and then add a rule that they are exceptionally 
> accepted in main under specific narrow circumstances.
> 
> If you agree with above, Francesco, then I suggest going forward that we 
> talk about the "license fulltexts are non-free software but accepted 
> narrowly in main" as being a _proposal_ rather than current rules in 
> Debian.

Actually, I have always thought this as the accepted Debian practice,
not as a proposal of mine!
The already cited [message by Glenn Maynard] shows that other people
viewed it that way back in 2005.

[message by Glenn Maynard]: <https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00299.html>

I am quite convinced that the same idea has been expressed on
debian-legal more than once, since 2004 (the time when I became an
active participant).
It's just not easy to search for the evidence, since searching for
keywords such as "license" and "exception" on the debian-legal archive
results in an overwhelming number of false positives (where the topic
under discussion was the GNU GPL and appropriate linking exceptions,
e.g. to allow linking a GPL-licensed work with the OpenSSL library!).

> 
> Perhaps that shift might also help you being less perplexed? :-)

No, I am even more perplexed, after reading your reply...   :-/


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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