On Thursday 2009 January 08 04:14:02 Johannes Wiedersich wrote: >Joerg Schilling wrote: >> It _is_ a shame >> that Debian does not come with the bug-free original software but with a >> replacement that causes many problems for the Debian Users. > >Let's summarize: > >1. You'd like to have the 'bug-free original software' in debian. That would be great. However, that requires convincing the ftp-masters that Debian isn't taking legal risk by putting distributing the software. Even then, Debian really can't be forced to distribute any particular piece of software. See http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq points 12r, 16, and 26. >2. You don't release your original software with a license compatible >with the DFSG [1], ie your licence is explicitly not one of those >endorsed by the debian project. In fact you deliberately changed your >license from one endorsed by the debian project to a different one. > >This seems rather contradicting to me. The DFSG doesn't mention the CDDL specifically, but I'm fairly sure CDDL is generally considered a free license. I could be wrong, DFSG-free is generally more strict that OSI-open. Anyway, Debian is more concerned with the package, instead of the license. E.g. pine used a license generally accepted as free, but interpreted it in an odd way, resulting in the removal of pine from Debian. I think there has been cases the other way around, too. By not exercising some options in a generic license, a package using it might be free or not. >3. You claim that your mixing of licenses is legal, despite dozens of >people from different free and commercial distributions having a >different opinion on the matter, including both GNU and Sun, who seem to >agree that both licenses are incompatible. (GNU is the body that defined >what 'free software' is, so it seems obvious that any license that is >designed to be different by definition is 'not free' or at least 'less >free'. Sun designed the CDDL explicitly to hinder mixing of GPL and CDDL >codes [3].) Yeah, I suppose it's possible Joerg could be right, but he's going to have to provide significant actual support to his claim and not just keep repeating it, for Debian to accept it. Each time he repeats the claim with no support he sounds more and more disconnected from reality. >4. You claim that distribution of debian's (modified) version of wodim >is *illegal* despite the fact that you also claim that your software is >free software and hence legally distributable in modified form as well >as in unmodified form [2]. Joerg doesn't really have a problem with the distribution of the code (modified or unmodified), but he is worried about the "Integrity of The Author's Source Code" something allowed by point 4 of the DSFG. I'm assuming he wants to exercise the option: "The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software." However, neither license he's used as those terms in it, AFAIK. His claim of violating the GPL / German "Copyright Law" seems to focus on the symlinks provided with names that match the cdrecord binaries, and maybe a few other uses of the strings "cdrecord" et al. This is like claiming that IE infringes on Netscape's copyright by using the string "Mozilla" in it's browser identification. Technical measures required for interoperability are generally held to be not restricted by trademark, patent, or copyright law. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.