Re: JRockit in non-free, part II

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>

> Johan: if you can get BEA to license it under terms which amount to
> "Begin license.  Any recipient may distribute this code without
> royalty.  End of License." then it can go in non-free.  But that's a
> pretty basic requirement even for non-free: that Debian, its mirrors,
> users, and forkers be able to distribute code.

Huh? I have always understood that there were only two criteria for
going into non-free:

  1. That the Debian mirror network can legally distribute the source
     and binary packages.

  2. That there is a developer who is willing to maintain the package
     to a reasonable standard of non-bugginess.

As a specific example, it is not required that non-free packages allow
distribution by for-profit CD vendors, and somewhere we have an
explicit warning to CD vendors that they should not distribute our
non-free archive without checking the license of each individual
package to find out whether they are legally allowed to do so.

Distribution permission for users and forkers (sic!) are freedom tests
which must be present for the package to go to contrib or main. They
are not necessary for non-free - in general non-free packages do not
need to even allow forkers.

Similarly the "specific to Debian" bit is for DFSG freedom and not
necessary for the non-free archive either.

-- 
Henning Makholm             "Jeg forstår mig på at anvende sådanne midler på
                           folks legemer, at jeg kan varme eller afkøle dem,
                    som jeg vil, og få dem til at kaste op, hvis det er det,
                  jeg vil, eller give afføring og meget andet af den slags."