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Bug#481491: debian-policy: please add LPPL v1.3a to Policy



On Fri, 16 May 2008 09:33:38 -0700, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> said: 

> More relevantly than the total size, IMO (1.8MB isn't really very
> much) is that according to popcon, one-seventh of our systems have at
> least texlive-base installed.  If every texlive-base installation
> would benefit from having LPPL in common-licenses and most
> installations involve more than one package with the LPPL, that looks
> like a fairly reasonable case for common-licenses to me.

> It's not as strong of a case as the Apache 2.0 license had (nearly
> half of our popcon-reporting systems have at least apache2.2-common
> installed), but one-seventh is still a lot of systems.

> Manoj's suggested guide was 5% of the binary packages; that's probably
> a higher bar, and I'm not sure if TL meets that one; that would be
> about 4000 binary packages using the license, and we added the Apache
> license based on only about 250.  I wonder if something like 10% of
> popcon-reporting systems having at least two packages using that
> license installed would be a better metric.

        Well, ZI still think we should not lower the bar too much; since
 every binary package that we ship which does not ship a copyright file
 is undistributatble by itself, and can't usually be installed on a
 non-Debian based system using, say, alien.  It also makes it harder for
 automated processes to extract the copyright file directly, though
 probably that matters less.

        The only thing that offsets this drawback is that some disk
 space is saved in /usr/share/doc/; (and the bandwidth required to
 transport s slightly larger package around) [For embedded and very low
 memory systems, it would be far better to just get dpkg to not unpack
 stuff in /usr/share/doc, or to remove that after install].

        So, while I am not opposed to rethinking where the bar should be
 for common-licenses, I would prefer us to examine the cost/benefit
 ratio, and personally I tend to be for _shrinking_ common-licenses, not
 expanding it.

        manoj
-- 
"I was charged on minestrone, and invincible." Vicki Brown, about AI
programming.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>  
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C



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