Re: Squeak in Debian [was: Re: first cut of core packages?]
[Dario Rapisardi]
> The issue has been discused several times. The last one was last year in
> debian-legal. The thread is quite big:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/04/msg00160.html
Well, I do not have time to wade through a long thread to find the
current consensus. Which bring me back to my wish for a summary of
the finding, documenting the problems with the current license.
> Somebody suggested to include it in 'non-free', but putting Squeak
> in the same repository as Java or other really proprietary software
> doesn't seem fair to me.
Well, I do not care much about the perceived fairness, but there are
other problems with having it in non-free. (SUN Java is not in the
non-free archive, btw. The license prohibits it.)
Packages in non-free are not automatically built on the architectures
supported by debian. The reason is that there are some non-free
licenses prohibiting this, and there has been no interest in trying to
classify non-free software to know which are safe to build and which
are not. Another issue is security support. As far as I know, the
security team do not spend time securing packages in non-free.
Similar problems are with debian/contrib. These are some of the
reasons I have to trying to get all the packages we use in debian-edu
into debian/main.
But unless the squeak license is according to the debian free software
guidelines (DFSG), it does not really matter what mine (or yours)
opinion on the matter is. I see quotes from the original squeak
author claiming that the license should not be interpreted as written,
but instead the intent of the original author should be used instead.
It would be great if copyright law worked like that, but as far as I
know, it does not. And until copyright law changes, we need to look
at the license as it is written, and compare it to the DFSG to check
if the license is according to DFSG.
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