On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:42:00AM +0100, Adeodato Sim?? wrote:
> * Anthony Towns [Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:24:47 +1000]:
> > > II. Transparent And Opaque Copies
> > The way we distribute source and binaries doesn't meet this requirement;
> Well, this assuming that distributing the source in the same directory
> as the "compiled" form does not satisfy the gfdl's "along with" (I'm
> sure some -legal person will be able to teach me proper English);
It's not the "along with", it's the "include .. with each opaque
copy". Having a separate file on the archive doesn't include the source
with the binaries. Maybe that's ambiguous though, in which case an
indication from an FSF lawyer of the correct interpretation should
be fine.
> but
> if this is the case, I don't understand why the same distribution
> method does magically not infringe the license terms if the section is
> "non-free" as oppsed to "main" ('cause stuff in non-free has to be at
> least legally distributable by us).
Because in non-free, we'll jump through whatever hoops are necessary
-- whether that be getting Debian-specific permission, only letting
some particular authorised maintainers build debs, only distributing
official binaries, not autobuilding, whatever.
> (And if determined that it's not okay, then one can go with the "or
> state in or with each Opaque copy a [...] location [...] to download
> [...] protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document" clause.
> I'd say a maintainer is taking "take reasonably prudent steps" if they
> include in debian/copyright (1) the upstream url, (2) the url for
> ftp.d.o:/pool/sourcepkg, (3) an url for archive.d.o, (4) an url for
> snapshot.d.n.)
The upstream url doesn't include any Debian changes, source files in
the pool don't stay around for a week after the debs are gone let alone
a year, and archive.debian.org only includes the last stable release
of software, not stuff that's uploaded to unstable but is removed from
the archive before being released, eg. I don't think snapshot.d.n is
reliable enough to rely on for license terms; for instance it's currently
supposedly missing about a year's worth of data between 2004/02/27 and
2005/03/12.
The morgue on ftp-master, which includes debs and sources going back to
July is about 175G (ie, the size of the archive again), six months of
the 2004 morgue (2004-02 to 2004-07) that happens to only include source
makes up 16G; so a year's archive (the GFDL's term) could be up to 50G,
while three year's source archives (the GPL's term) would probably be up
to 200G. It's probably /possible/ to do that, but it seems like a fair
bit of work to maintain reliably (which would detract from time spent
doing work actually necessary to release), and it seems like we ought to
have that work done first before saying "GFDL stuff should just include
a link to /blah/".
What documents would this effort actually let us keep, anyway? All the
FSF stuff for glibc, gcc, make and so on includes invariant sections
anyway, no?
Cheers,
aj
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