As an observer of both the Debian and Apache licensing discussions
surrounding the development of the Apache 2.0 license, I wanted to make
a suggestion regarding the Debian legal review of licenses. It seems
like groups like the ASF want to work with Debian when revising
licenses.
However, while debian-legal is a useful forum for discussing the merits
of licenses and possible incompatibilities, an outside group like Apache
doesn't seem to be able to get a definitive opinion about licenses under
development. This puts Debian in contrast to other groups such as the
OSI and the FSF.
In the end, this seems to undermine Debian's ability to express a
collective opinion and influence the licensing of free software. I
think it would be in the best interest of both Debian and the rest of
the free software community if Debian could get it together well enough
to have an clear communication channel for license reviews.
Specifically, I suggest:
1. a single place where review requests should be sent
2. review requests are posted to debian-legal for general discussion
3. an official entity, either a committee or a trusted individual who is
able to gauge consensus sufficiently effectively assembles
discussion, drafts a response which can be posted here for review
prior to returning it
4. response is returned within 30 days of submission
It would be laughably tragic if Debian ends up deciding that future
license revisions like Apache or any other free software project must
end up in non-free.
Daniel
