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Re: Draft Debian-legal summary of the LGPL



Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 10:06:31PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>though LGPL is quite OLD, AFAICS there is no summary. To put it on the
>>web pages, I wrote one:
>>
>>Debian-legal has concluded that the LGPL (Library Gnu Public License)
>>v2 and LGPL (Lesser Gnu Public License) v2.1 is a DFSG-free license.
>>
>>The licenses are included on every debian system in
>>/usr/share/common-licenses, so I ommited the full reference
> 
> I think your intentions are noble, but I don't think we should do this.
> 
> Not because the LGPL doesn't deserve a summary, but because it hasn't
> been done right.  The entire license needs to be posted and carefully
> scrutinized.

For that matter, the same applies to the currently-posted summary of the
GPL.  At the moment, the summary just states that the GPL passes the
DFSG because it is explicitly listed in DFSG 10.  It would be highly
preferable to compare the GPL against DFSG 1-9 as if 10 wasn't there, as
a consistency check: we don't want 10 to act as an exception to the rest
of the DFSG, only as an example of some licenses that pass the rest of
the DFSG.

> Furthermore, it might be wise if we only attempt to adjudicate licenses
> that are brought to us for consideration.  I'm not sure we should go on
> hunts for licenses to audit ourselves; to do so might damage the
> impression of impartiality that we should attempt to cultivate and live
> up to.

Agreed, except that we should, at some point, review and summarize all
existing licenses used for software in Debian.

- Josh Triplett



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