On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 12:24:38AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 02:06:11PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > Huh ? If it would be licenced under the MIT/X11 licence, there is no > > need for the source code for us to distribute it ? > > I was figuring we'd just disassemble it and call that the source code. > > As long as that's true in practice for us, and we actually treat it > like de facto source code, adding comments to it and modifying it as > needed, I don't see a DFSG 2 problem here.
Cool. > > This would be a good solution. What about the later Apple licence ? > > If we can get it under the MIT/X11 license it doesn't matter what other > licenses it's under. The MIT/X11 license is non-exclusive. Well, i ask, because apple may be more inclined to use a licence they have experience with. > > Notice that the DFSG doesn't cope well with lost source code or lost > > legal paperstuff needed to assertain (and modify) the licence. As was > > shown in the case of the ocaml old-bignum case, whose licence ownership > > was lost in the DEC -> Compaq -> HP mess. > > I don't think the spirit, intent, or letter of DFSG 2 is breached as > long as we have something that *really is* the source code for us. > > What does violate DFSG 2 is shipping binaries, or obfuscated source, and > hand-waving it as "Free" because it's the "best we can do", when it's a > hopeless task for us to substatively modify the work. > > My argument does presume that we have people who are capable of hacking > up OldWord PowerMac boot sectors, and who proceed to do it to get d-i > working for those machines. From personal experience with some of our > developers, I don't think our ability to do can reasonably be > questioned. Nope, just the available time to do so. > > In this case, would a disclaimer from HP as the potential IP holder be > > enough for freeing the code, at least until someone else with the said > > IP papers can come out and claim the copyright ? Especially when there > > is assumption that such papers where irremedially lost. A nice > > comparative of this is the AROS project, who were told by Amiga Inc to > > be infringing the Amiga IP or whatever, but where Amiga Inc was never > > able to come up with the papers supporting their claim, as it seems that > > the amiga IP rights got lost somehow in the 10+ proprietary chain. > > Probably someone left with them in their pocket during that time. > > I don't feel qualified to speak to the ocaml-bignum or AROS cases, and > which in any case are not relevant to d-i. nope, they are not. > I will observe that if the people who claim you're infringing their > copyrights publicly admit that they can't susbtantiate their claim, > there's probably not much to worry about. But I am not a lawyer and > this is not legal advice. Yeah, but in the ocaml-old-bignum case, the code was removed from debian/main and reimplemented upstream, because Bdale told me he couldn't get hand on the place were the stuff was, or hadn't time for it, or whatever. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
