On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 08:30 -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Mon, Nov 10 2008, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > > So far as I can see, the only significant difference between #5 and #2 > > (or #3) is the requirement that upstream distributes "under a license > > that complies with the DFSG". > > Yes. Without that clause, one can say we could ship something > like nvidia drivers in main -- since we are legally allowed to do so, > even though the license might be very non-free otherwise. That opens a > hole the size of a bus to let non-free code into Debian. That earned it > the "overrides the SC" label. The nvidia drivers have never been in main, and AFAIK no-one claims they are firmware. > > But it is surely irrelevant whether the licence text says we can > > modify the source when the copyright holder is deliberately > > withholding the source. (Further, in some cases the licence is GPLv2 > > which requires us to redistribute the source we don't have - though > > thankfully there are only 1 or 2 such cases left.) > > How do you know the author is withholding the source? Yes, I > suspect they are, and I doubt that the blobs are the preferred form of > modification, but these are judgement calls, not proof. I mean, I have > written programs in hex in my time; the hex blob _was_ the source > code. One of these programs was even for a radio transmitter on a > breadboard. But these are already DFSG-compliant and no resolution is required to say so. > All we are doing is is not throwing out code we suspect, but do > not know for a certainty, might violate the license it is distributed > under. Said license being DFSG free, though. [...] That's an even greater feat of double-think than is usual around non-free. Ben.
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