Re: Legal Status of VCG
Michael Schmidt <mschmidt@cs.uni-sb.de> wrote:
> This project was recently shut down by FSF, since he used pirated
> code for his project. He will soon restart the GNUVcg project with
> a proper code base. Therefore I'm asking you to remove the illegal
> package from your servers.
If mike's message announcing the reopening at
http://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=3619 is
accurate, then I think your statement is inaccurate and probably
defames him, in my opinion. He received the code in good faith
and he is acting to avoid future copyright infringement. I am
not a lawyer, but I think you should definitely consult one before
posting similar statements again.
> The current stable package (1.30-3) is OK and can be distributed.
> So it should be easy for you to simply drop the illegal testing
> package and revert to the package in stable until GNUVcg makes any
> progress.
Is it OK with you if it is removed 2 days after upload of a legal
package? As far as I can tell, that is within the maintainers'
power to do by uploading a suitably urgent update.
> Last week I asked James Michael DuPont to inform you about these
> facts but since the package can still be downloaded from your
> servers it shows me that he did not.
If you are the copyright holder of the affected code, then
I would expect it to require some sort of notice from you
before such drastic action will be taken independently. Package
maintainers usually listen to their upstreams, but I wouldn't
blame them for being cautious about deleting code from debian
based on an unsigned random takedown notice.
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks.
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