On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 01:06:42AM +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote: > Le Lun 22 Mai 2006 00:55, Steve Langasek a écrit : > > On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 11:24:12PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: > > > Le dimanche 21 mai 2006 à 16:17 -0500, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : > > > > Good, but you shouldn't decide what others have to do. Some > > > > people are interested in java in non-free, it's not your job to > > > > try to forbid them to work on that. > > > Not if it hurts the project. And it does. > > How? > I personally thinks it hurts our users, and as a secondary effect, us. > Beeing distributable is a property that should not be depends upon the > time, the color of your hair, or the phase of the moon. > Java license (especially clause 4) makes the distribution of a specific > version of java beeing revocable, which can hurts a lot of users that > may then depends on it. A re-licensing e.g. would not be the same, > because the last previous version that had a distributable license > would still be allowed to stay in non-free until full deprecation or > even for life. These are fine reasons why Sun should be encouraged to make Java free software, instead of merely making it redistributable; or why we should educate users about the importance of Free Software and why they should think twice before accepting non-free solutions. This might even be an argument for Debian discontinuing non-free altogether. But I don't really see that they apply as reasons to keep Java out of non-free. Non-free is, well, non-free: very little, if any, of the stuff in there is distributed under terms that would prevent a copyright holder from later forbidding us from distributing the existing work, AFAIK, and there's no reason in general that we should be *happy* with the licenses of any works in non-free (though some individuals in the community may be). -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature