Re: Are Web-API packages need to be in the 'main' repo ?
On Sunday, December 04, 2011 9:29 PM, "David Prévot" <taffit@debian.org>
wrote:
> are we going to pretend that apt is non-free because we can't
> use it on a desert Island, since there is no ftp.desertisland.debian.org
> official mirror available?
There's a big difference between requiring a service
that has a free software implementation... and one that
doesn't. Assuming my Island has adequate computing
resources and unlimited free software, it probably
has an FTP server somewhere with Debian's distribution.
Unless, of course... Debian isn't using free software?
The problem is remote dependencies that lack a free
implementation and a changeable end-point.
On Sunday, December 04, 2011 3:55 PM, "Joey Hess" <joeyh@debian.org>
wrote:
> A user is already making that choice when they choose to install a
> facebook client (unless the client's description doesn't say it uses
> facebook!) -- but if we had a way to represent network dependencies,
> it could be used all the way up the stack to DNS servers if we wanted to.
Well, there's an issue here as well. If an application
depends upon a remote web service, implicitly included
in that application's licensing is the terms of service
from the remote web service? Hence, the license for an
application dependent upon a Web-API proposed to Debian
should in my opinion also include the appropriate TOS of
the Web-API. I doubt the TOS of Twitter, Facebook or
Google would pass.
If such programs are GPLv3, I'd go further and say that Debian
has no right to distribute the work since source code for the
Whole Work is not included in the distribution (5c). If one
claims the Whole Work is simply the wrapper, then I've got
dozens of proprietary libraries I'd like to submit. No only
can I keep my service proprietary, but I can track users,
charge them, and best of all... it's free software.
Best,
Clark
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