Hello Julien and bug log readers, Jason McCarty wrote: > xsane should not have a click-through license Dwayne C. Litzenberger wrote: > I agree. Kevin Dalley wrote: > I agree that it is undesirable. [...] I'll think about removing it > myself. Robert Lemmen wrote: > please don't forget about this issue, it is highly irritating. Julien BLACHE wrote: > I'd like to remove the click-through Santiago Vila wrote: > me too [...] this is not a minor thing, it is a slippery slope. We > should not consider this acceptable in an Operating System which is > free software. Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > Please reconsider this mandatory clickthrough licence. Bas Wijnen writes in this message: > I hopy you will reconsider your position. [...] upstream is overly > paranoid [...] Debian shouldn't follow him on that path.
This is quite a long list of people who have been annoyed enough by this
to look up if this was already reported _and_ take the trouble to write
"me too" to the bug log (minus two, who were appearantly maintainer of
the package when they wrote it). This indicates that, as Santiago Vila
writes, this is indeed not a minor issue at all.
On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 01:32:05PM +0200, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> The author has stated already that he doesn't want the clickthrough
> removed for legal reasons.
Indeed. And it is obviously his right to not remove it from his
distribution, but Debian doesn't need to suffer from authors with weird
ideas. If he thinks this helps him, then he can release it with the
click-through. But if he releases it as free software, then we have the
right to remove that. And IMO we should do it, too.
This is in fact a broader issue than just xsane or click-throughs. It
is about the fundamental question whether or not Debian packages should
be changed to match what Debian's users expect of them. If a program
does things in a way which is totally different from what Debian users
see in other Debian programs, then IMO there are two options: either the
software is not packaged, or it is adjusted to match Debian's standards.
This is true for click-through licenses, just as it is for excessive
"are you sure?" dialogs, for example. Debian packagers should make the
best possible system for their users, and that sometimes means diverging
from upstream.
If there is indeed a serious risk to damage hardware, like with
xvidtune, then it is very reasonable to add a warning, like in xvidtune.
But that's very different from an annoying "I agree" click-through.
The reason I'm writing this, is that I intended to finally report this
bug, which has annoyed me for some time (and found that it had been
reported already years ago). The bug I was about to report was (like
this one) "please don't annoy me with legal crap, I know things are
fine, otherwise the package wouldn't have been in Debian".
Reading the bug log, however, I found that the click-through was
intended to *warn* me. Well, it totally failed at that; from the
message I did not get any hint that I was about to do something
dangerous. The only message it was giving me was "this upstream is
paranoid about legal things, and the maintainer is too lazy to get rid
of this junk".
So IMO there are two options:
- If this is intended as a legal safeguard, then please refuse to annoy
our users with this nonsense and remove it in the Debian package. As
others wrote, this argument is just as valid for other software in
Debian, and we're not going to add this rubbish to every package in
the archive, now are we?
- If this is intended as a warning, then please make it a warning: tell
the user that things may break, where he/she may get more information
about the risks, and that it's his/her own responsibility. I don't
have a problem with quoting the "no warrenty" paragraph from the GPL
in there as well (at the end, after the actual warning). No need to
let the user "accept" it in any way, because that's only needed for
the legal safeguard, and I just argued (hopefully convincing) that
Debian shouldn't go there.
> I'm not going against the author's will on this one. I've told so
> already, this is my final word on the subject.
I understand your position, but am very disappointed by it. AFAICS,
you're saying that being friends with upstream is more important than
delivering a good distribution[1]. IMO this goes against our Social
Contract. I'm not going to use the SC as a stick, as that would only
result in unhappy people. But by mentioning it, I hopy you will
reconsider your position. From the bug log, I conclude that upstream is
overly paranoid about legal stuff. That's a pity. Debian shouldn't
follow him on that path.
Thank you for reading, and hopefully reconsidering,
Bas Wijnen
[1] Note that if the warning makes sense, and we add a message saying
"A click-through agreement was removed by Debian; Debian assumes all
liability (if any) that Oliver Rauch would otherwise have had
because of this removal.", he may not even be very angry with us.
Such a message may be added in an appropriate place (the about
dialog, for example) even without the warning, of course. OTOH, if
a warning is reasonable, then it is reasonable every time the
program is started (like with xvidtune). I'm not too convinced
about this. It sounds more like something for the manpage, the
about dialog, and/or README.Debian.
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