Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?
On 5/13/05, Humberto Massa Guimarães <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br> wrote:
> "This might be relevant if we planned on distributing only non-working
> copies of Quagga."
>
> The copies of Quagga that Debian distributes are non-working; try to execute
> a Debian package...
I'm not sure what you mean here.
I can do something like:
$ apt-get install quagga
...
Starting Quagga daemons (prio:10):.
$
This shows that installing the package is equivalent to running quagga.
According to the debian readme, this doesn't have ssl, even if you've
installed the suggested libsnmp. To run the version which includes
ssl support, I have to use different commands, such as:
mkdir t
cd t
I_WANT_OPENSSL=yes apt-get -b source quagga
dpkg -i quagga*.deb
These commands are easily deduced from the debian readme.
Of course, this might not work on the first try, because you might also
need to install some of the dependencies (such as libcap-dev, tetex-bin
and texinfo). And, of course, you need to be root or you can't
install debian packages. But "it might not work" is not the same thing
as "it won't work".
And, clearly, there is some intent to distribute a version of Quagga with
SSL support.
So, what can we do about this?
Personally, I like Ted T'so's suggestion (that Quagga be packaged
with an alternate ssl implementation so that we can legally distribute
quagga with ssl support). As long as there isn't some significant
aspect of quagga which only work with the versions of ssl which
have silly trademark promoting requirements (like requiring the
openssl.org boilerplate to be present when you mention
openssl's features) we should be fine.
If we don't do that, we might cause someone or some group
(perhaps some of us) to get stuck with paying openssl.org
some heavy license fee, to release openssl under gpl
compatible terms. Or, maybe we'll create a situation
requiring some other sort of settlement. And, if that's not
necessary, why should we do such a thing?
I don't know what the probability of legal action is in this
specific case, nor what the probabilities are that it would
succeed, but as a general rule (where this doesn't leave us
stuck in contradictions) we try to respect upstream's wishes
in the context of their software.
For a strictly legal point of view, I'll quote
http://practice.findlaw.com/20questions-1203.html
"More copyright litigation can definitely be expected ."
On the social contract side of the fence: giving some precedence
and respect to the stated wishes and requirements of upstream
(when dealing with their software) tends to be in the best interests
of the free software community.
--
Raul
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