Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms
Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> writes:
> OGC has provided George Percivall (CC'ed) as a contact point to
> discuss the OGC license terms, and I hope we can determine the
> appropriate person or team in Debian to fulfil this role on the Debian
> side.
That seems to me a strange way to approach this.
The Social Contract for the Debian Project explicitly states that works
acceptable for inclusion in Debian must not have conditions specific to
Debian.
So the Debian Project can't enter bilateral negotiations of software
freedom between a copyright holder and Debian recipients; the Social
Contract deliberately excludes that. To be acceptable in Debian, the
work's license conditions need to grant software freedoms to all,
regardless of (and prior to) the work being in Debian or not.
> The FTP masters seemed the best choice initially, but their lack of
> feedback on this issue make doubt they want to help resolve this
> issue. If debian-legal is also not the appropriate contact in Debian,
> can you suggest who would be a good contact in Debian to discuss the
> licensing issues with people from OGC?
I think it's unhelpful to be seeking some delegate as though a bilateral
negotiation is to take place.
If that's not being sought, then a simple open examination of license
conditions, and their effects on software freedom, should suffice.
We're certainly happy to discuss the effects on software freedom of a
work's set of license conditions, but ultimately with copyright law as
it stands today such a discussion can only be very one-sided. The Debian
Project can't change the license terms of the work, only the copyright
holders can do that. Discussion should be directed toward actions the
copyright holder needs to take in order to grant a license that makes
all recipients of the work free.
Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic@xs4all.nl> writes:
> We have chicken-and-the-egg problem here, before OGC can fix the
> license we need to establish a dialogue between the Debian project and
> OGC to discuss the needed changes.
I don't see how that's a prerequisite. The license terms are available
to examine; the Debian Free Software Guidelines and a lot of expertise
in interpreting them are available; and known free-software license
texts that are well-established are already available.
So, are we able to proceed to discuss the matter openly without the
prior condition of “establish a dialogue between the Debian Project and
OGC”?
--
\ “I think Western civilization is more enlightened precisely |
`\ because we have learned how to ignore our religious leaders.” |
_o__) —Bill Maher, 2003 |
Ben Finney
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