Re: debian-legal review of licenses
Scripsit Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader <leader@debian.org>
> And, as mentioned before, I'll like -legal to be more proactive and
> talk to upstream authors of licenses instead of waiting for them to
> contact us.
Usually, when we talk to upstream authors, we try to be careful not to
sound as if we think that we can *demand* that they change their
license. We try to stress that the upstream author is perfectly
allowed to set non-free terms for his code if he choses to, but that
non-free terms would mean that we can't distribute his code in Debian.
It would be hard to preserve that attitude if we were to begin to
contact authors unsolicited. It would be very bad publicity for Debian
and for the free-software movement in general if too many people start
thinking about us as "those maniacs who wrote to me out of the blue
and demanded that I gave them the right to do all sorts of obscene
modifications to my code".
I think that we should not begin giving too much advice to upstream
authors who has not at least shown interest in having their code
included in Debian. That is, "we" as debian-legal. It is of course
quite appropriate for a prospective *packager* to approach an upstream
author and politely inquire whether he would be interested in
discussing relicensing with the goal of getting free enough for
Debian. But I think it is crucial that this request comes from the
packager who can sincerely start with "I really like your software,
and I would like to be able to...".
It is reasonable for the packager to ask (and expect) d-l's help in
wording an accurate description of why the current license is
non-free, for use in his initial contact. If people have a problem
getting that, it's a problem that must be solved, but it is not my
impression that we send prospective maintainers away empty-handed when
they ask for such help. Perhaps, however, we should be more proactive
in *offering* help rather than just saying "no, this is not free".
Once the upstream author has shown some interest, it is reasonable for
the packager to hand over the situation to someone from d-l. Then we
could start out initial letter with
I'm one of the legal guys NN talked about in his email; I write on
his behalf to help find out whether there's a way you could
license your code which would allow him to package it for Debian
as well as keep you happy ...
which would be so much better an opening than
I'm writing on behalf of the Debian GNU/Foo legal department. It
has come to our attention that you're distributing software that
is not free, according to our understanding of that word. Would
you please ...
It is possible that we need to work out some procedure for selecing a
d-l regular to do the detailed interaction with the upstream author.
I realize that this job requires a more careful selection than the
free-for-all volunteering I proposed for summarizing discussions in my
other message. But I still think it would be a bad idea to concentrate
the entire effort on a single officially appointed delegate.
> I'd like to hear what other people from -legal think. I'm certainly
> not going to appoint anyone without the consent of -legal since this
> is just not the way it can work.
If we need to appoint someone officially, it should be a Keeper Of The
List Of People Trusted To Interact With Upstream Authors For Debian.
The KotLoPTtIwUAfD could then match packagers in need of asstance with
a PTtIwUAfD who has time to provide it. But even that would be a
single point of failure, and it does not take many months of reading
Debian mailing lists to learn that single points of failure in social
processes is a Bad Thing indeed.
(Of course another role that could in theory be appointed is Person
With The Power To Make Authoritative Observations Of The D-L
Consensus. The prevailing theory that this role is currently filled by
the ftpmasters, but I'm not sure that the ftpmasters know this).
--
Henning Makholm "Jeg køber intet af Sulla, og selv om uordenen griber
planmæssigt om sig, så er vi endnu ikke nået dertil hvor
ordentlige mennesker kan tillade sig at stjæle slaver fra
hinanden. Så er det ligegyldigt, hvor stærke, politiske modstandere vi er."
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