Re: debian-legal review of licenses
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
>> Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader <leader@debian.org> writes:
BTW, he didn't actually write any of the quoted text...
> Scripsit Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
>> - Someone brings license to d-l, short discussion ensues with rapid
>> conclusion.
> [...]
>> I'd say the clear majority of cases fall into the first category, and
>> I'm not convinced that case is broken.
>
> The perceived problem is that it should be possible for the outsider
> to get the rapid conclusion without subscribing to the list or risking
> to have an entire long flamewar Cc'ed to him.
That's definitely a problem worth solving. Could we use the BTS for
this? If each license discussion corresponded to a bug (where d-l is
the "maintainer address", say -- make a "legal issues" dummy package, or
however it works) in the BTS we could send updates to that bug, as well
as have discussion on the list about the issue.
Not being a DD, I'm not terribly familiar with the BTS, so I don't know
if this is entirely feasible in practice. Who would be able to close a
bug, for example? I'll bow to the judgement of those who know what
they're talking about here. ;)
>> - And what you mention above, where no one brings a license to us but we
>> notice an OSI certified license that's not DFSG free.
>
>> And as for the last case, I personally wouldn't want to touch it with
>> a 10' pole. It's hard enough talking to people about licensing
>> issues without first having to interest someone who probably doesn't
>> care.
>
> I agree that this is the difficult case. Much as I can see why the DPL
> would like someone to touch this, it would be a very difficult and
> thankless job to do, and carry a risk of giving the licensor a very
> bad initial impression of Debian.
Yeah, exactly. I can't say that I really have a problem with the idea,
so long as its handled carefully and with tact. But I don't think it's
really the same issue as the above. Once contact is made, and if the
licensor is open to discussing the issue, it reduces to the one of the
other cases I mentioned.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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