Re: Why licenses don't need to be free (was: Re: Why licenses *are* free)
Hello,
On Sun, Aug 16, 1998 at 11:33:22AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>
> No more so than standards. The GPL standas alone. Software
> authors can choose to use the GPL as the license under which to
> distribute their software.
>
> Standards stand alone. Software authors can choose to
> adopt/follow the standard in their code.
A package that contains the GPL just to contain the GPL (so that it can be
removed from Debian without imapct on other packages), should be in non-free
as well as immutable standards. Count me in.
Base-files contains the GPL for the whole distribution for practical
reasons. It can't be removed from main without breaking law.
> We do not ship the GPL bundled with software. The licenses
> /usr/doc/copyright/{Artistic,BSD,GPL,LGPL} are shipped sepatrately,
> in one *ONE* package, namely, base-files (the package is in no way
> under all those licenses).
base-files is essential. This is only for practical reasons. The spirit is
there, and we ship the GPL in the Debian MAIN distribution because this is
required by copyright law.
> We do not ship licenses bundled in with software. Repeat after
> me: We do not ship licenses bundled in with software.
We do. The spirit is there. The difference is only a technical.
> Marcus> So, we have to ship the license with the software in the main
> Marcus> distribution.
>
> Therefore, this statement is also incorrect. We can too put
> the GPL in verbatim.
But we can't remove it from main, and this is my point you choose to ignore.
> Marcus> We don't have a stand-alone GPL package, so this whole
> Marcus> discussion is non-sense.
>
> Yes, and no. The apckage also contqains other files, including
> other licenses. But is does not contain any executable that I can see
> offhand.
So what? Removing the base-files package from main would still be illegal.
> I think this discussion is not what is non-sense; the
> arguments you have presented so far may qualify ;-)
Is it your only intention to be clever or are you actually trying to be
productive in this discussion?
> Marcus> You are speaking about stand-alone licenses.
>
> Umm, aren't all licenses stand alone? This makes no sense.
No they are not. They apply to the work they copyright.
> Marcus> We have to consider solely licenses that are applied to
> Marcus> software and data entities.
>
> Yes, true. Like the GPL, artistic, BSD, etc, which we ship
> stand alone.
No, we do not. Stand alone means we could remove them. We can't remove them
without being illegal.
> Marcus> License documents are not the data entities we are talking
> Marcus> here about, they are "meta" in the sense that the spoeak
> Marcus> about the date.
>
> No more so than standards. The RFC on SMTO doies not itself
> implement an smtp service, or indeed, talk about internals of a smtp
> server. It is a meta docuent that talks about the interface.
We can choose not to ship a standard, but we can only choose to not ship a
copyright if we ship nothing else, too. The copyright is the only thing that
grants us redistribution.
> I see little difference between a standard and a license.
This is your problem. Sorry, I have tried to make it understandable for you.
If you still can't see the difference, I can't help you.
> Marcus> We can't ship the data without the license, and furthermore
> Marcus> the license is the only thing that grants us our freedom.
>
> Yes, we need shipt the license. But it can be in the verbatim
> section. No one tells us where in the file system or on the archive
> we have to put the license.
So you are suggesting to remove /usr/doc/*/copyright.gz from every single
package, and put a dependency in every package to the appropriate copyright
package in the verbatim section? Or what is your glorious "solution"?
You are not at all reasonable in this discussion. We have over 1500 packages
with many hundreds of copyrights applied to them.
> We do not ship the licenses with the software, so this is nonsense.
For most packages we do. For the common copyrights, we choose a more
practical solution, that is still following the spirit. We don't strip the
copyright comments from the executables, too. Some programs display the
copyright on request (emacs).
> Marcus> Is this bad? No. Has this any influence on our work? No. Does
> Marcus> it make sense to create an extra section for license
> Marcus> documents? No, why should we ship license documents
> Marcus> seperately from the software?
>
> I love this. I can now repeat all your arguments about
> standards here.
I take this that you are only discussing for the sake of discussion. This
makes sense, as your comments are failing to be reasonable and are deliberately
missing the point.
> I think I object to treating them differently. Hypocrisy is
> somehting I abhor.
So do I.
If this mail sounds like I'm pissed off by your behaviour in this
discussion, take it for granted.
Thank you,
Marcus
--
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@
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