Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On 2004-07-11 10:59:22 +0100 Mahesh T. Pai <paivakil@vsnl.net> wrote:
MJ Ray said on Sun, Jul 11, 2004 at 10:24:26AM +0100,:
Personally, I'm not sure that is as much of a problem as the >
requirement
to distribute unpublished mods to a central authority on > request.
[...]
At some point of generalisation, this becomes an issue of striking a
balance between a particular user's right to keep his modifications to
himself, and right of the community as a whole to have access to free
software.
I know that many in the free software community tend towards belief in
anti-proprietary stances (preventing software hoarding, and similar).
I am surprised that there is any support for expropriation (forcibly
taking another's private software). Maybe I have misunderstood what
balance you are describing?
As you can read elsewhere, I am not convinced that debian-legal is >
equipped or wise to try to analyse licences in abstract.
I'm afraid that this list will have to do both - analyse licenses in
general, and also scturinise specific packages when brought to our
notice.
Why?
In the specific case of licenses which are outright non-free, we need
to tell DDs / upstream that packages under a particular license cannot
be in the archives.
No, we need to tell DDs/upstream what changes need to be made for a
package under that licence to be part of debian. "Just saying no" is
the wrong thing to do.
Even if a package is under a poor licence, there maybe could still be
exceptions/waivers granted. I'm not sure whether debian has accepted
such things before.
In general, analysing licences out of context is no use to debian
(does not get more software in the archive) or to the licensors (if
their software is not trying to get into debian). The only case when
it is useful is if this list is asked for comments on a draft, usually
with some particular software for debian in mind.
Licence analysis has its place, but as part of considering a package,
rather than outreach on its own. The debian event and country-specific
groups are far better places for outreach. I hope we see some legal
members helping them, too. Instead, -legal needs to "inreach" more, to
keep as many DDs as reasonable on board.
As I wrote before, I think a summary of consensus on the libcwd >
situation
is more useful than a licence summary.
If we decide that because libcwd is solely under the QPL,
I think we've noticed that libcwd is not a pure QPL. I'm still
wondering whether it has infringed the copyright on the QPL. I doubt
Trolltech would do anything: their "copyright" link at the foot of the
licence page displays trademark details entitled "copyright
acknowledgements", so maybe they don't have a competent and watchful
legal department. http://www.trolltech.com/company/copyright.html
it cannot be
in main, will some situation arise where application X, also solely
under QPL can be in main?
No, but it would be possible that QPL-like +extras could be. Having a
checklist QPL=>non-free decision isn't as helpful as we could be.
Worked examples are a far better explanation.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
"Matthew Garrett is quite the good sort of fellow, despite what
my liver is sure to say about him in [...] 40 years" -- branden
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