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Re: General Resolution: Handling of the non-free section: proposedBallot



On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 12:20:55PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 05:39:53PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > On 2004-03-05 15:53:13 +0000 Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > >Yeah, but wasn't one of the argument of dropping non-free the fact 
> > >that
> > >that would put pressure on upstreams of non-free packages to change
> > >their licence. [...]
> > 
> > Not one of mine. I'm not sure what effect it has on that, but I 
> > suspect a net zero. Maybe someone else will discuss that with you.
> 
> I forget who said it first, but I believe it went:
> 
> "Having software in non-free encourages the authors to change their
> licenses"
> 
> "The opposite is at least as likely"
> 
> [I don't think it has any real effect, either; I find both
> possibilities to be unlikely to the point of absurdity]

Well, the example of the ocaml package showed that the first point is
true. And i know what i speak from, i lived it first hand, as i took
over the non-free ocaml package in 98, and have participated in gradually
removing all burdens that were keeping it in non-free as time pased. 

And not always thanks to debian-legal, which wanted me to go to upstream
about the QPLed emacs .el issue with the argument of : "we should be
polite to RMS".

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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