Re: SPDX, unbranding? (Re: DEP-5 meta: New co-driver; current issues)
On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 01:42:41PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Not sure if this point has been raised already:
> If Debian use an own format rather than e.g. SPDX then we might
> easier be able to deal with potential disagreements on licensing
> interpretations.
> Debian has different opinion than, say, FSF, on what is an
> acceptable FLOSS license. We might in the future disagree with
> other distros on how to interpret some licensing issues like what
> exactly the OpenSSL license conflicts with, or how to handle
> licenses mentioning patents.
> I know that we are not lawyers. But we still have opinions that may
> reflect our view on licenses - sometimes differently from other
> distros.
> Imagine the SPDX folks deciding that two licenses are so similar
> that they use a single shortform for both. And imagine that we want
> to distinguish those particular licenses. Then it is better to have
> a format of our own - which ideally is then machine-translatable to
> the "universal" format, where the translator then deals with the
> quirks of merging or hinting as fuzzy.
My understanding is that the SPDX folks are also not lawyers, and are open
to drawing the lines between different license keywords where it's useful to
consumers of SPDX - including Debian.
We may wish to allow for temporal divergence from SPDX, just as we do for
the FHS in Debian Policy; but I wouldn't like us to start from the
assumption that SPDX shortnames will be unsuitable, particularly when the
implementors have gone to quite a bit of effort already to incorporate the
DEP-5 work as a basis for theirs.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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