Trimmed CC: little; I can't imagine why this should go to -testing ... On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 02:49:36AM +0200, Marcel Weber wrote: > All I can say to this is: use what you like, resp. if you don't like > bloated software or spamware do not use it. My point is, that it should > be a right of the original authors of the software to include credits. > If someone else does a complete rewrite of the software, okay than we > can discuss it, but if the rewrite means only the removal of the > credits it is questionable.
This is irrelevant. We're not questioning whether Hans Reiser has the right to license his own software to prohibit the removal of large messages. The questions being asked are: 1. Is software licensed in the manner Hans intends DFSG-free? That is, is it DFSG-free to require that interactive programs output a full page of sponsorship information? (That's a question for debian-legal.) If not, it can not be distributed in Debian and will be relegated to non-free. 2. Is the software licensed consistently? If not, it's probably not legally safe to distribute at all, and will be removed entirely unless Hans clarifies the licensing. Another question that comes to mind: has ReiserFS used code from projects licensed under the GPL? If so, he can not, in fact, place this extra restriction, as it would be in violation of GPL clause 6. This isn't a special issue for programs under completely different licenses; they know they're not GPL-compatible and don't use GPL code. However, when people use "modified" GPL licenses, they often don't realise that they can no longer use code from other GPL projects. > But first of all, before we continue this discussion: What exactly has > been removed? A readme file, the outputs during boot time, the outputs > of mkfs.reiserfs? Has this output any impact on the usability of the > software, so that there were good reasons the remove it? Has the > license been violated by removing the credits? It's been suggested that the removed message is the one referenced in this bug report: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=152547 Impact and "good reasons" don't matter. Debian requires that users be granted the right to do certain things regardless of whether they have "good reasons". If Hans doesn't want to grant those rights to users, that's may be his choice, but Debian won't distribute his software. -- Glenn Maynard
