Re: Why only one non-free section?
--On Friday, September 11, 1998, 3:59 PM +0200 "Stephane Bortzmeyer"
<bortz@pasteur.fr> wrote:
>
> It seems there are a lot of problems with the non-free section, for
instance
> CDROM vendors who do not bother to check every licence individually and
who
> exclude the whole non-free tree. Basically, it comes from the fact that
> non-free gathers packages which have very different reasons to be
non-free.
>
> It seems that, for CDROM resellers or mirror sites, the most intelligent
split of free would be instead
> between "non-free-but-can-be-put-on-CDROM" and "non-free-other"?
>
> I assume this discussion was already held, so if someone can explain.
The main reason is that we don't want to assume the legal responsibility for
deciding what can and cannot be distributed. A secondary reason is that the
licenses involved can be particularly hairy -- some stuff in
"non-free-but-can-be-but-on-CDROM" won't then allow that CDROM to be sold
commercially, or it can be sold commercially, but not bundled with a
commercial product, or it requires the CDROM vendor to give the author a
copy of the CDROM, or a postcard or... Either all of those licences would
have to be lumped into "non-free-other", or the CDROM vendor will still have
to vet every license anyway.
By just having one "non-free", and warning the vendors of the issue, we let
them know they have to examine the licenses themselves, and they assume
responsibility for any mistakes in licensing.
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