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Re: All DPL Candidates: www.debian.org licensing?



Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote: [...]
> It seems to me that, for this issue to be solved, we first need a
> clear consensus on debian-www@ about:
> - the plan we are going to follow

I believe we need legal advice on the validity of the various plans
before there will be a clear consensus on one.  The relevant published
legal opinions on relicensing were commissioned by people who appear
to have interests in copyright assignments, which the debian project
does not share.

> - the license we are going to use

There seemed to be broad consensus on BSD-style as default with other
DFSG licences like GPLv2 being allowed, didn't there?

> It could be a good idea to write a DEP about that, so other developers
> have a clear document to read and understand (as opposed to a bug log).

Maybe.  What's the current DEP HOWTO?

> Questions about that issue:
> 1) You seem to think that delegating someone now would be useful. Why?

I think we should ask a debian-tied lawyer before doing a lot of unfun
work which may turn out to be useless if we get it wrong.  I'm not
confident that we can do this through SPI unless the DPL or a delegate
asks, because some SPI members seem to oppose it without that.  Even
so, I think SPI is the best route for the project to ask a lawyer.

> 2) Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña's plan include:
> | b) old contributors to the web site [..] should be contacted and ask to
> |    agree to this license change.
> |
> | c) a note should be added to the Debian site [..] describing the
> |    license change [..] and giving a 6 month  period for comments.
>
> If some old contributors can't be contacted, would a note on the website
> visible for 6 months be legally enough to move forward with the license
> change? Later, you suggested shortening that period. Is this legally
> possible?

I expect the validity of using a general notice depends more on
whether it was reasonably prominent, rather than having a 6 month
comment period, but I don't know: I am not a lawyer.  Are you?  If
not, can we ask one of ours, if Raphael becomes DPL?

Hope that clarifies,
-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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