Bug#122929: wpoison to be included in Debian
Dear Robert,
I am replying both to the sender address on your mail, and also to the
other one you specified (zeratul2@wanadoo.es) as well as the address
122929@bugs.debian.org as you requested.
My apologies if that causes you to receive duplicate copies of this
reply.
In message <[🔎] 20011209131222.G10084@aragorn>, you wrote:
>
>Hello,
>
>Wpoison looks like a very nice script, would you like it to be packaged and
>included in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution?
Frankly speaking, I am somwhat ambivilent about this idea.
I like having more publicity for my work, but Wpoison is only a very
imperfect method of combatting spam. I am working now on better things.
>I've analised your license, BSDish with an additional advertising clausse,
>and it appears to be free software as with our Free Software Guidelines
>(http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines). wpoison is now
>in queue to be packaged.
>
>We respect and honor your advertising clausse.
I would like to know how exactly you will do that.
The ``advertising clause'', as you put it, applies to each end user of
the script who installs the scrip on a web site.
How will you arrange things so that the people who install the script,
for example, from a Debian CD, will be properly informed that as a
condition of installing the thing they must put the small Wpoison
icon and the associated link on their home pages?
I suspect that at present, whatever tool or tools are used to install
optional packages, e.g. from a Debian CD, probably do not make any
special effort to show any of the license terms and coonditions to
the person who is installing the package.
Is that true?
Is there some way that you _can_ show some sort of text message to a
person who is about to install an optional package?
If there is such a method, then I would simply ask that you use that
existing mechanism to show the user the ``advertising clause'' from my
license, preferably BEFORE the install actually takes place (but after-
wards would be OK too).
I ask this for the obvious reason... Many people have downloaded and
installed Wpoison but have never bothered to read the license _or_ to
obey its requirements. This makes me very angry, but obviously I cannot
sue them all, or even find them all. And I would not want to sue them
anyway. (I hate lawyers.)
>however, there are
>some things that I'd appreciate from you of being changed:
>
>- redistribution of the logo.gif image is allowed by clausse 1,
I am not sure that is true, but it is not important. I hereby grant
permission for anyone using my Wpoison script to use and/or copy the
logo.gif file also. (I would have been more explicit about this small
matter before now, but I do not know how to attach any sort of a copy-
right statement to a GIF file. :-)
>could you also allow using a local copy of such image to comply with 4th
>clausse by linking to your website? this would give us the possibility to
>include such image in the package and save you some bandwidth.
OK.
>- the GIF image format is covered by an Unisys patent. we don't support
>such patents because they're an obstacle for the people that makes use of
>them, including you as author of the image. See
>http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
I am aware of this issue.
>could you either allow redistribution of the same logo in the alternative
>high-quality PNG format, or provide a PNG logo in your website to remotely
>link it?
I will allow redistribution of the logo as a PNG format file.
Will you convert the existing GIF file to PNG, or did you want or expect
me to do that step?
If you could do it, I would appreciate that, and it would make things go
faster, I think, because I'm very busy just now, and I don't know when
I could do it.
Regards,
rfg
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