On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 14:00:28 -0300 Carlos Laviola wrote:
> Still haven't subscribed, but I'm reading the archives periodically.
It's mandatory, you know. It's just easier to manage...
> I'm in the middle of a lot of stuff -- just gave a talk about Debian
> at the university's 2nd annual week on "FLOSS", have an Statistics and
> Calculus exam today and tomorrow, respectively, gotta go to the
> dentist, am moving out of my parents' house... Heh :-)
May the Source be with you! :)
>
> It would be a hell of a lot easier for everyone involved if the FIGlet
> people would choose MIT/BSD style. I don't know what to do now.
Try and persuade all the FIGlet copyright holders to agree on a big
relicensing.
Since they dislike copyleft, the best choice would be the Expat license
(http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt), IMHO.
Other optimal choices can be: the X11 license
(http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html) or the 2-clause BSD license
(http://www.fsf.org/licenses/info/BSD_2Clause.html).
This would nuke all the issues, once and for all.
> Maybe
> when Christiaan, the current FIGlet maintainer, comes back from
> vacation and release a new version with the license changes,
Which license changes? To Academic Free License 2.1?
If this is the case, I hope he changes his mind...
> I'll just
> *have* to upload to non-free. I don't know whether the current,
> Artistic-licensed version still qualifies for main;
I don't think so, as the DFSG-freeness of that old Artistic license is
questionable, IIRC.
Moreover there are unsolved issues with unclearly licensed files.
Worse: there are possibly undistributable files and this means the
package is perhaps not even suitable for the non-free section, until you
obtain clarification from relevant copyright holders...
> all I do now is
> that the people who held copyrights on FIGlet in the past are still
> very much interested in keeping it free software. *sigh*
I'm sure I follow you correctly here: are you saying that many FIGlet
copyright holders are willing to let FIGlet be free software?
This would be great news...
>
> When I have a few hours of spare time, I'll compile everything I have
> so far and mail the list again, subscribe using something non-webmaily
> -- gmail is nice, but it's a bitch for mailing lists -- and, well,
> actually try to solve this situation.
Good, I'm looking forward to seeing an update on this issue.
>
> This is a call for help; if you have some time, please subscribe to
> the figlet mailing list and start a discussion on this subject or
> something.
Well, you are the Debian maintainer, hence you know upstream better than
I do.
You have more chances in being successful.
And, last but not least, I spend time in keeping up with debian-legal...
:p
>
> Thanks a lot for all of your help so far.
You are welcome, I really hope we can work out a solution with upstream
and get a DFSG-free FIGlet!
--
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
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