Re: Idea for non-free organization
1) Simply remove the non-free from the archive and the problem will go
away. CD buyers are unhappy if they don't get a 'complete mirror'.
2) Non-US is the fault of my government (better worded as the government
which happens to rule my nation). PGP is actually non-free in the US, so I
can't export it and I can't use it in a job or business without paying for
it. The US government should accomodate Debian, not the other way around.
3) Discontinue use of PGP in the project. I carefully checked the license
terms and I have to buy it to use it as a Debian developer. I would
venture to say that every US maintainer needs to consider whether his
business or employer eventually benefits from voluntary participation in
the project. That constitutes commercial use of PGP. So I won't apply to
become a maintainer. The 'unofficial' packages I build are now unsigned.
4) The packaging system and tools are the best available. Encourage people
to use them. Every debianized packages does not have to be part of the
official distribution but should be harmonious with it.
5) (I believe this only applies to a few people) Don't be rude or snobbish
to 'outsiders' who fix problems and send the info to the package
maintainer. If I add 2 characters to a line of c and it fixes something,
use it. If you don't write c, ask another maintainer about it. But be nice
to guys like me who are only trying to help.
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Robert Woodcock wrote:
> Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 18:31:18 -0700
> From: Robert Woodcock <rcw@oz.net>
> To: debian-policy@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Idea for non-free organization
> Resent-Date: 1 Jul 1998 01:31:31 -0000
> Resent-From: debian-policy@lists.debian.org
> Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ;
>
> Manoj probably won't like this, since it borders on giving legal advice, but
> here goes:
>
> Instead of splitting non-free into different directories like cd-ok (etc etc
> etc), why can't we put another tag into the package's control file, called
> 'Redistribution:', and set it to values like 'dfsg', 'cd', 'commercial',
> 'exclusive', 'government', 'ftp', all of which could be excluded with 'no-'?
>
> We could even do stuff like 'no-export' for non-us packages, and perhaps put
> in stuff like 'fails-dfsg-#'.
>
> My feeling is that once a package acquires a tag like 'fails-dfsg-6' or
> 'no-government', it will be easier to catch accidental uploads to main, and
> it will be more obvious to the developer where they were led astray.
>
> And it can't hurt to put a big huge disclaimer across the whole thing.
>
> Keep in mind Policy section 2.1:
>
> * We want to make as much software available as we can.
>
> * We want to encourage everyone to write free software.
>
> * We want to make it easy for people to produce CD-ROMs of our system
> without violating any licenses, import/export restrictions, or any
> other laws.
>
> Making all our vendors decide for themselves what is legal to put on a CD
> does not further goals 1 and 3.
> --
> Robert Woodcock - rcw@oz.net
> "Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses" -- Richard Gabriel
>
>
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