Re: Q for all candidates: license and copyright requirements
On 24/03/10 00:27, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Our users, if they want to modify, study, redistribute or use after rebuild our
> system, need the source. At no moment these operations involve modifying a RFC
> or a binary program that is aimed at run on a Windows system. I conclude that
> that kind of file, although present in our source packages, are not part of the
> source of our operating system.
To me, the sources of Debian are the source packages. Saying that something
shipped in the source packages is not part of the Debian sources sounds a bit
contradictory :)
> I understand well Stefano's point of view that we serve better our users by
> making things clear and removing these files from our source packages so that
> we can say that anything that is in our main section is DFSG-free. I do not
> think it is so useful, however, since one can not blindly use DFSG-free
> material as we tolerate advertisement clauses, renaming clauses, and clauses
> forbidding to sell the software alone. Not to mention patents and trademark
> issues.
You can assume that the Debian sources are DFSG free. No more, no less. Arguing
that since you can trust the sources are patent-free we should stop making them
DFSG-free doesn't sound too logical to me.
> I think that we should have the possibility to redistribute a bit-identical
> upstream archive when possible.
We have. I do it all the time. When the upstream tarball is free.
> In the title of my platform, I wrote ‘more
> trust’. What we can do with repacked tarballes, we can do with pristine
> ones. If we do not trust each other that a couple of useless non-DFSG-free
> files can be ignored, what else can't we trust ?
We trust each other not to introduce non-free works in the upstream tarballs
when packaging new releases. Isn't that trust?
I don't buy how 'trust that a developer introduces non-free works' is anything
we want.
Emilio
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