Re: No mention of "patents" in DFSG
Richard Spindler <richard.spindler@gmail.com> wrote:
> But in my opinion this is to little of a statement. I believe that
> whenever a package is removed from the repos, there should at least be
> a list of the incedents that lead to the opinion that the affected
> package needed to be removed. [...]
If they can be made public safely, I think they would be in the removal
request bug. The biggest problem is if a patent-aggressor requires
silence as part of the settlement, saying they'll sue for past crimes
if it's made public.
> Unfortunatly all I know about these 'histories of active enforcement'
> is from rumours, and from people whose opinions are partly shaped by
> 'FUD' I am afraid. [...]
That is unfortunate. Have you tried looking into the famous software
patents at http://swpat.ffii.org/ for example or are you looking for
debian package examples in particular?
> Does anyone know who is the person responsbile for such decisions, or
> who is familiar with how a process to verify the removal of packages
> due to the above mentioned reasons could be set up to fit into the
> debian community process?
I think maintainers and ftp-masters are responsible for decisions to
remove; and I think verification is already part of the process, but
note that a package simply becoming no fun to maintain because of patent
threats can result in a reason for removal (no maintainer), too.
Hope that helps,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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