Re: Honesty in Debian (was Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 05:25:52PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Stephen Gran wrote:
> >Do you really think that
> >there is a magical difference depending on where you ship a file?
> 
> It's not a "magical" difference.  It's a documentation difference.  And a 
> very important
> one.
> 
> There's a big difference between "We'll have random non-free stuff mixed 
> loosely into
> the free stuff", and "Free stuff will be over here; non-free stuff will be 
> over there."

There is an easy solution to this :

  All files of questionable licencing should either be removed from main
  packages, or explicitly listed in /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright, in an
  easily parsable way even that an automated tool can use to give you a list
  of such files, remove them, or whatever else.

  Preferably they would be listed together with a one line reason why they are
  non-free, and possibly a tag or something.

How does that sound ? The filesystem in see is only one rather crude way we
organise the files in a debian system, so as long as there is an easy way to
find out about those files, you should be satisfied.

Furthermore, the copyright file is the canonical place where licencing and
copyright information are held, so it is the natural place to hold this, and
not some random subdir like you propose.

Friendly,

Sven Luther