Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:24:13AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-07-19 19:07:58 +0100 Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>
> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 01:39:14PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> >>I don't think personal insults really help anything. What I see is a
> >Well, you claimed there was a consensus, while there is clearly no
> >such thing.
> >Thus it is a lie [...]
>
> Hrm, when did Brian claim his was the consensus view? Calling someone
> a liar should not be done lightly.
Because he wanted to believe that, and it furthemore served its own interest
to act thus. Unless his talk of not wanting to give back his changes to the
upstream author was rethoric though.
> >Well, again, if it came to a GR i doubt debian would actively support
> >code
> >hoarders.
>
> I doubt they would actively support offensive licensors either, so any
> such GR would be an interesting choice of the lessor of two evils.
Offensive licensors, again, the real problem, being that you only care for
licence violating users, and not for the upstream authors right, there is no
licence in this.
> >A, a consensus is one where there is no discordant voice, right ?
>
> Wrong.
Err, a consensus is one where everyone roughly agrees with the topic that is
getting consensed ?
> >What much more ? And what do you loose if upstream is allowed to use
> >your code
> >in the main product, and thus everyone profits ? Again, only a code
> >hoarder
> >would reject this kind of clause, and as thus get no sympathy from me.
>
> Can upstream not put it in the main public download product, only the
> Super Contrib Version given to their paying friends under the QPL?
Well, they maybe could, but then they would have to manage a forked three,
which they don't want to do. I just recently managed to get them to consider a
dual branch CVS tree, with one branch for the stable release and the other for
the development version. They used to have just one tree, and i had to
backport all their fixes and ignore non-compatibiltiy preserving enhancements.
So again, it is a practical question, and i strongly believe that if everybody
is fair minded and reasonable, none of the terms will ever come to any
problematic case in this particular package.
If upstream is overreacting in a protective way, let's them do it, especially
if both we and the FSF agreed to it 3-4 years ago when they chose this
licence. If we change our stand at whims, what guarantee do upstream have that
our position will last ? Or maybe it will come some day when we only accept
BSDish licence because the GPL don't really allow proprietary modification ?
> >And i hope you don't tell your AM that you are code hoarding, i doubt
> >he will
> >appreciate.
>
> I hope you don't tell your AM how you behave. I doubt they would
> appreciate it, either.
Hehe. I am not in the AM queue, so i can be as rude as i want. Betters than me
have shown the example, have they not ?
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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