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Re: DFSG conform OSI licenses



On Sat, 2007-09-01 at 12:05 +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> debian@nn7.de wrote:
> 
> >the recent discussion about 'Firebird being in main' caused even more
> >confusion on my side, as the sites [1], [2] (which I consider the
> >debian-official statement wrt. which license is DFSG compliant) do not
> >list the MPL as a DFSG conform license but as DFSG-incompatible [1].
> The only official statements about DFSG compliance are made by the
> ftpmasters.

Well this is not too helpful. I would wish that licenses that are
acceptable are all officially listed somewhere (here?
http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ ). Also each rejected license
should be documented (with the reasons why it is conflicting). Else it
is hard to decide / understand whether a package should go to main.

> Especially the wiki contains obvious bullshit, e.g. Postfix is licensed
> under the IBM PL and I do not remember anybody ever seriously contesting
> its freeness.
> And while some of the debian-legal licensing kooks mutter about the MPL
> from time to time, there are many MPL-only packages in the archive and I
> do not subscribe to the theory that the ftpmasters are idiots who can
> miss "licensing bugs" for years (i.e. when a different majority forms
> on debian-legal@).

So this means, MPL, CPL == IBM PL are all DFSG conform licenses.

> >More generally, as I understand the ten items that lead to the OSI open
> >source definition [5] are based on the DFSG. Now I wonder which extra
> >requirements the DFSG (suddenly?) include such that certain open source
> >projects choosing a particular OSI license cannot enter debian main.
> Actually, soon after being created OSI started relaxing their
> interpretation of the DFSG to allow licenses which were widely believed
> by the Debian community to be problematic. IIRC they also made minor
> changes to the OSD.
> It was after this that the DFSG-revisionists began to infest
> debian-legal@ and started inventing new criteria for DFSG compliance.

Is it know (ie. summarized somewhere) what these modifications are and
with which DFSG items they conflict?

Thanks,
Soeren
-- 
For the one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it
will be utterly fantastic. -- Arthur C. Clarke, 1962

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