Re: reasons for split of libavcodec54 and libavcodec-extra-54, missing codecs and a metapackage.

[Andreas Cadhalpun <andreas.cadhalpun@googlemail.com>]

Hi,

On 19.11.2014 15:25, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> On Nov 19, 2014 8:24 AM, "Nicolas George" <george@nsup.org
> <mailto:george@nsup.org>> wrote:
>  > It is perfectly legal and compatible with the license to USE a GPLv2
>  > program with a GPLv3 shared library or the other way around. Licenses can
>  > only control distribution, not use, and the GPL does not try to do so.
>  >
>  > Therefore, I do not believe this kind of conflict is in the users' best
>  > interest.
>
> You are missing that users may be distributors themselves, as indicated
> in my example earlier in this thread.
>
>  >
>  > Actually, there is not much that Debian must do to ensure compliance with
>  > the licenses. Possibly prevent BUILD a binary .deb package from GPLv2
>  > source when the GPLv3 library is installed.
>
> That was basically my position so far.  Andreas was pointing out that we
> should also consider redistributors.

Yes, I think it is reasonable to expect that anything installed from 
Debian main can be redistributed, e.g. on a live DVD.

However, this is not the case if you install e.g. dff (GPL v2 only) and 
libavcodec-extra-56 (GPL v3).
Distributing this combination is not allowed, because it would require 
to comply with the incompatible licenses GPL v2 and GPL v3.

Thus I think Build-Conflicts is not enough.

Best regards,
Andreas