discuss: licensing issue
Subject:
Re: licensing issue
From:
Colin Watson ####@####.####
Date:
4 Dec 2001 14:26:13 -0000
Message-Id: <20011204142535.GA9375@riva.ucam.org>
On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 09:58:11PM -0500, David Merrill wrote:
> Debian has not had a change in licensing policy; they were simply
> unaware of LDP licensing. Which tells you how many people bother to
> read licenses.
>
> Colin Watson, the new LDP maintainer, approached me about ScrollServer
> and we started talking about LDP packaging, which I had never looked
> at before. I wanted to get Debian to start registering their
> documentation, especially the LDP, with the ScrollKeeper database.
>
> I was very surprised to find that they were including nonfree
> documents in the main tree, which is a clear violation of the DFSG,
> so I let him know they were in violation.
>
> I realized then and now that this would be a problem for the LDP. I
> thought about it long and hard and decided I had no other choice. Once
> the situation came to my attention I couldn't just ignore it and
> pretend I didn't know. That would have been deceptive and unethical in
> my judgement.
Likewise for me.
Moving over half of doc-linux into non-free is not something I'd do for
my own amusement or to annoy LDP authors or whatever; technically it's a
fair amount of work which I'd rather avoid, but the issue has been
raised now.
I hope that authors will consider licence changes. In many cases the
problem is simply that redistribution of modified versions isn't
allowed, which we promise for everything in main.
--
Colin Watson ####@####.####
