Bug#439674: Way too difficult to find if some license is DFSG-free at all
Juhapekka Tolvanen <juhtolv@cc.jyu.fi> wrote:
> "Is this license called X free according to Debian Free Software
> Guidelines"
>
> Every fscking time I try find answer to such question from WWW-pages of
> Debian-project, I find it to be outrageously difficult and time-consuming
> task:
The underlying reason is that no *license* follows the Debian Free
*Software* Guidelines. The DFSG are for *Software* not *licenses*.
In other words, your question is buggy and unanswerable in that form.
That is explained quite clearly on this page:
> http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/
"Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular
packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general
explanations."
> Just compare your lousy license-list page to this:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
That is linked from the debian page. FSF has more time/money spent on
this than debian and can maintain a bigger list, but still I prefer
debian's public, package-centred approach.
> 1) You can not navigate to that page easily from front page of
> Debian-project; I just somehow stumbled across to that page some day.
> Why on earth these pages do not have links pointing to it?:
Agreed. Navigation is a weak point of www.d.o
> 2) It has very few licenses.
36 is "very few"?
> 3) It is updated way too slowly.
Agreed.
> 4) It do not provide references to relevant WWW-pages, documents, papers,
> decisions, mailing-list messages etc., where freeness of certain license
> is further evaluated.
Tracking that is a *big* job. There have been several attempts.
Generally, searching list archives for the licence name will find
relevant pages. Maybe we can automatic-link that.
> 5) It do not have summaries about freeness of licenses.
The DFSG are about freeness of software, not licences.
> 6) It do not point out exact versions of licenses that are free or
> non-free.
Agreed. That is a bug. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.
> Right now that lousy WWW-page do not give exact answers to these questions:
>
> Is GNU GPLv3 DFSG-free?
This relates to your point 3 (slow updates), but I believe it is.
> Which Creative Commons -licenses are DFSG-free and which are not? Which
> versions of those Creative Commons -licenses are free and which are not?
I believe all CC licences are lawyerbombs because of the DRM wording.
> Is GNU FDL DFSG-free?
Again, slow updates, but "GFDL-licensed works without unmodifiable
sections are free"
http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001#amendmenttexta
I don't understand it, but that's the ruling.
> 1) Sometimes aptitude, vrms and other tools show some package in main, when
> in reality it is not DFSG-free package at all; It happens all the time with
> packages that come from some unofficial apt-get-source. Packages of
> debian-multimedia.org are very good example of such packages.
Isn't that a bug with those unofficial apt-get-sources, aptitude and/or vrms?
> 2) First I must find some Debian-package that has exactly the same license
> whose DFSG-freeness I am trying to figure out and then check out if it
> has gone to main or non-free. But it is almost impossible:
> packages.debian.org do not provide searching packages having certain
> license.
Isn't that a missing feature of packages.debian.org? Report a
wishlist bug against it.
> Sometimes Debian do not have any package having same license whose
> DFSG-freenes I am trying to figure out.
Yes, that's an unfortunate effect of license proliferation.
> 3) Sometimes some non-free stuff may slip to main.
That's a bug against the non-free stuff or ftp.debian.org
> Those were those drawbacks. I am not very sure about that last one.
>
> Right now Debian has a new package called ttf-konatu and it is in main.
> It uses Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Does that
> mean CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 is really DFSG-free? What if
> ftp-master made a mistake?
I don't know.
[...]
> I am very often interested in stance of Debian project in license
> questions, because those people evaluate licenses very carefully.
> Sometimes they find problems that are not found by FSF; GNU FDL is good
> example about such license. But when decisions about DFSG-freeness of
> license are done, they are not very well reported to outside of
> Debian-project.:
There are very few decisions about DFSG-freeness of licenses.
Decisions about DFSG-freeness of software are readily visible by the
big red "non-free" tags on packages.debian.org.
> GNU FDL had its problems from day one, when FSF released
> it. But it took way too much time before Debian-project made enough
> noise about those problems: First there was discussions in debian-legal
> of course. Then something appeared to Debian Weekly News. Then came
> this announcement:
>
> http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060316
>
> But aforementioned license list still says nothing about it.
I still don't understand that announcement, so, I cannot accurately
describe it. I will link it Real Soon Now.
I think many people would agree the FDL was handled poorly by many.
[...]
> Now same thing is happening with CC-licenses: There has been big hype
> about those licenses but Debian project has been too quiet about problems
> of those licenses. Meanwhile people have created non-free content, because
> they think CC-licenses are |<00|_ and nobody have told them there are
> non-free licenses in CC-licenses.
I don't think that's fair. People including Benj Mako Hill, Rob Myers
and even RMS have been pointing out the drawbacks of bits of CC for
years:
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/ip/20061115-00.html
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/11/08/why-the-nc-permission-culture-simply-doesnt-work/
http://www.linuxp2p.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10771 used to quote RMS:
"It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the
Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they
will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of
all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons
entirely."
Surely people who try to inform themselves about CC instead of blindly
believing the hype should be scared off already by the lawyerbombs,
cross-pollution and hum votes. ISTR there's no consensus about this
within debian, so it would be hard to take a strong position on
/legal/licenses/
So, agreed bugfix work for /legal/licenses/ page:
1. point out exact versions of licenses that are free or non-free.
2. link FDL decision.
3. generally check page is up-to-date.
4. maybe link in from other relevant pages and link out to searches.
other bugfix work, if anyone wants it:
5. open bug against vrms about non-debian apt sources
6. open bug against packages.d.o for search-by-licence
Hope that explains,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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