[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Proposal: changes to summary guidelines



On 2004-07-14 00:32:37 +0100 Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> wrote:

MJ Ray wrote:
2) The first sentence clearly states the full name of the licence, the
version number and any software packaged or ITP'd for debian that is
under that licence, with links as appropriate.

While I do agree that debian-legal should not be reviewing licenses
except in the context of evaluating whether a given piece of software is
Free[1], I don't think that a particular piece of software in question
should be mentioned in the summary itself, for several reasons:

* It singles out a particular package, which I believe will raise _more_
accusations of vigilante license analysis, not less.

If done badly by mistake, I think the harm is about the same.

Otherwise, in the package case, it seems reduced. Yes, it does single out a package. Ideally, we should get the maintainer's consent first, but that might not always be possible. Or maybe it will. Sven Luther, who I don't think is a fan of many regulars here, has referred a bug here.

In the licence case, ill-meaning people will just look for the biggest name package which uses a licence, or enumerate all of them, as happened with MPL last month.

* Analyzing the license with a particular package in mind may cause a
summary to only be valid for one particular package.

Unlikely, unless the package is a particularly queer fish, when it would have its own licence summary anyway. See my comments in another email about making work for ourselves, too. If we analyse the licence, then the packages, we need n+1 vs n analyses in the worst case. 2 vs 1 in simplest case (first package under a given licence), now that I think about it. It might also mean that we don't have maintainers and upstreams strongly involved until analysis 2, which seems like a disconnection with the developers.

Having a fairly short summary that references another one doesn't seem like a bad thing. Hopefully they'll be common.

Thanks for your thoughts. Sorry I don't agree any more with using this list for any more abstract analyses of licences than necessary.

--
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



Reply to: