On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 03:07:37PM +0100, Jordi Mallach wrote: > On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 08:48:08PM -0500, Brian Ristuccia wrote: > > Make your decision based only on Debian policy. If it's Free Software, it > > goes in Main, unless it has crypto - then it goes in non-us/main (at least > > until the crypto in main thing is settled). If it's non-free software or > > depends on non-free software, it goes in non-free or contrib respectively, > > provided we're able to distribute it at all without infringing. > > Well, there are other uses for non-US, like software with patents or > affected by US laws, right? >
It's not clear that Debian really uses non-us as a workaround for US patent related problems. Some confusion arises from packages like gpg-idea, which is in non-us/non-free. True, gpg-idea containscode describing how to implement the IDEA symmetric cypher, and yes at least one company claims to have a software patent which covers IDEA. But I think gpg-idea is in non-us because it is crypto related, not because of patent issues. A good counterexample is gimp1.1-nonfree, which includes a LZW compressor that Unisys claims is covered by one of their patents. It is in non-free/graphics, not non-us/graphics or non-us/non-free/graphics. Some other things with similar patent situations, like mpeg-1 layer-3 encoders, we don't distribute at all. Also, we don't distribute any software capable of playing most commerically available DVD's, even if there's no patent or software license issues. The situation is unclear. > I need to upload bnetd, I'm holding it until I know where. > If the copyright license meets our DFSG, it goes in main. Otherwise it goes in non-free. Unless it has crypto, the it goes in non-us. Second guessing our thoroughly settled process based on the spectre of legal threats not even vaguely uttered is just not a good idea. Such sillyness can only lead to a situation where a prospective packager of any given bit of software simply gives up in confusion after trying to evaluate every potential legal outcome that could arise from distributing their package. The debian-legal mailing list is not a lawfirm. Almost all of the frequent posters here are not lawyers. In fact, I suspect most members of this list don't have any training in the law at all. All we do here is compare software licenses against the DFSG part of the Social Contract and give a best-guess recommendation of whether we can distribute the software without infringing copyright or violating our Social Contract. So I suggest you end this thread now and go work on your package. Write anymore here and bnetd will simply wind up sitting in incoming forever because none of the ftp-masters will want to take responsibility for adding the package after reading all of the ominous sounding nonsense on this mailing list about how it might potentially cause us some legal disaster. -- Brian Ristuccia [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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