* Jeremy Hankins [Mon, 05 Jun 2006 09:31:19 -0400]:
> My opinion, for what it's worth, is that most DD's, despite occasionally
> having strong opinions on licensing ("*This* license is _free_, @#$^!")
> are totally uninterested in taking the time to sort through the
> nitpicking arguments about language, jurisdiction, and law, etc., that
> are needed to make a decision on a particular license or work. That
> leaves a vacuum on d-l, where such discussions are supposed to take
> place.
> So that leaves those of us who may not be DD's but (by whatever
> perversion of character) are actually interested in discussing licenses,
> and motivated to ensure that the quality of the licensing of Debian
> software remains as high as that of the software itself. We, naturally
> enough, have helped to fill that vacuum.
So let's make an analogy. Imagine one day, the bulk of Debian Developers
stop being interested in maintaining GNOME (or KDE, if you wish). The
packages begin to rot, become obsolete, uninstallable, etc. Then, a group
of non-developers who care about GNOME and, also, care about GNOME being
in good shape in Debian, step up and try to help.
The thing is that, no matter how much they work and no matter how high
quality their packages are, at the end it _HAS_ to be a Debian Developer
the one to sign the .changes file. Credit and acknowledgement will go
to the non-developers, of course, since they did the work, but a DD has
to review and sign it before it is consider oficially part of Debian.
And, if sadly no developer would be interested in uploading those packages,
those contributors do not get to create an Alioth project, set up a
repository, _and_ tell the world those are the official GNOME packages for
Debian. They can create the project, set up the repo, and inform interested
parties that they believe those packages are suitable for Debian, that they
would like to see them in the official archive, and the reasons why they are
in gnome.alioth.debian.org instead of ftp.debian.org.
As you'll understand, nobody would like for debian-legal@lists.debian.org
to become the gnome.alioth.debian.org in the example above.
P.S.: Please CC me if you drop -devel.
--
Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org
Te has enfadado conmigo / porque te dejo / Es injusto
No quieres volver a verme / porque no quiero / que estemos juntos
Estás siendo egoísta / no has penseado que me quedo / solo yo también
-- Astrud, Caridad
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