Re: Official judgements and rationales on freedom of a work for Debian

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org> writes:

> On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 09:30:29AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > I don't know of any better way of reliably divining the will of the
> > ftpmaster team, without submitting the work for entry to Debian.
>
> [ftpteam hat on]
> Yeah. That's basically it. Giving heads-up is clearly appreceated, by
> sending mail to ftpmaster@.
> [ftpteam hat off]
>
> ftpteam time is limited, so it's unlikely someone will give an official
> judgement for every license emailed to us. I don't know where we as a
> team stand on that, but that's my perception.

Right. Thanks for weighing in!

So, to disappoint everyone hoping for “official final judgement” before
submitting a packaged work for entry to Debian: Sorry, that's not how
it works.

You can save a lot of effort by using this forum as a resource for
catching legal problems in the work *before* packaging it.

But this forum is only capable of providing time-saving assistance in
the form of “that's unlikely to be accepted, for reason FOO and BAR”.

There is no authority in this forum to deliver answers of the form “that
work will definitely be accepted” or “that work has no legal issues
which would cause its rejection from Debian”.

Just like testing code, this forum can show where likely problems exist;
but no such forum is capable of demonstrating their absence.

-- 
 \       “Science shows that belief in God is not only obsolete. It is |
  `\                        also incoherent.” —Victor J. Stenger, 2001 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney