Re: [PROPOSAL] Allowing crypto in the main archive
On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 12:42:22PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
> >>>"Jakob" == Jakob Bøhm <jbj@image.dk> writes:
> > Jakob> no-source (example: Netscape, opera)
> > Jakob> no-commercial-use (example: zyxel)
> > Jakob> payment-required (example: opera<5.0)
> > Jakob> contains-crypto (example: RSA, gnupg)
> > Jakob> uses-us-patent (example: IDEA, GIF)
> > Jakob> uses-non-us-patent (example: IDEA)
> > Jakob> contaminates-result-license (example: old bison)
> > Jakob> no-sell-copies (problem for cd-rom or pre-installed system)
> > Jakob> requires-other-sw (example: wrapper script which is not itself DFSG)
> > Jakob> requires-specific-hw (example: driver licensed only for specific hw)
> > Jakob> other-problems (any problems not listed, alone or in addition)
> >
> > Someone got convicted in Texas for doing something vaguely
> > similar, on the grounds they were practicing law without a
> > licence. In fact, you shall be opening yourself to liability in the
> > US, since this is close to giving legal advice to people.
> >
> > This is one of the resons we have not previously classified
> > the non-free packages.
[*]
> In a non-free package I maintain, I explain in debian/copyright why the
> package is in non-free, to aid CD-ROM distributors trying to decide
> whether they can include the package. Does this mean that I have to add
> a disclaimer about this not being legal advice as well?
>
> Should a note to this effect be included in policy section 2.1.6? In
> general, I'd like to see packages with non-free licences that "look
> free" to the unpractised eye explain in debian/copyright why they don't
> meet the DFSG; I think there was a discussion along these lines on
> debian-legal a few months back.
Perhaps enumerating the DFSG sections the license fails would be
sufficient, at least for package manager front-ends and CDrom
distributors? Personally I would like a slightly finer-grained choice
for those systems I have where I even ALLOW non-free at all (mostly
games BTW) and I can tolerate certain section failures (I can probably
allow failures against DFSG 234 for games, for the sake of playing said
games at a LAN party)
[*]And since we already have the DFSG enumerated into sections and use
it as a metric to decide what is main/contrib and what is non-free, we
can at least mention (perhaps verbally, perhaps as a new header) which
sections the license fails. And then package manager front-ends could
use this information to show/hide parts of non-free.
But for certain other restrictions such as no-commercial-use the DFSG is
not granular enough (But it should NOT be that granular - any use
restriction at all is sufficient for it) and a second breakdown of
licenses would be convenient, but I'm not so sure this should be
something Debian itself should do given the recent arguments about
giving legal advice. Still, I think this would be more helpful for those
of our users who want to use non-free.
-- Ferret
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