Scripsit Adam Kessel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Is there a reason why the reiserfsprogs package couldn't fork and
> continue under a free license? It is in Debian, licensed under GPLv2.
The legal implications would be rather murky. As far as I understand
Reiser, his basic claim is that he has *always* understood the raw GPL
as forbidding certain modifications which we at d-l view as functional
changes that are permitted by the GPL and necessary for DFSG freedom.
After he discovered that this interpretation was not universally held,
he has offered "clarifications" and recently a new license, to prevent
further misunderstandings.
However, this does not mean that *our* interpretation of the raw GPL
is the one a court would use if the matter were to end up here.
Courts tend to put a large weight on the licensor's own interpretation
of the licence - especially for free-as-in-beer licenses where, from a
traditional legal viewpoint, there is no compelling reason to protect
the licensee's interests to the detriment of the licensor.
The short of the long is that Reiser would have a significant chance
(although not complete certaincy) of winning a suit against a user who
modified the software in the way that Reiser does not like - even if
the user had recieved the software under the plain GPL. (The user
might stand a somewhat better chance if he could in good faith say
that he was not aware of Reiser's non-standard interpretation, but
protecting users by purposefully keeping them ignorant is very far
from everything Debian stands for, so I am ignoring that possibility).
Now, the DFSG. Contrary to what one may think from reading the current
wave of flaming on d-d, the DFSG is not an opaque ruleset that we
follow because It's The Law. Rather, at its core the DFSG is a promise
we make to our users:
We, Debian, promise you, the user, that *IF* you get some software
from Debian main and handle it in the ways the DFSG stipulate, and
nevertheless somebody sues you with a claim that his copyright has
been violated thereby, and wins, *THEN* we shall be very surprised
and shameful, and we will consider our license control to have
failed. [1]
In the light of the above analysis, we cannot truthfully make that
promise about a forked pre-clarification reiserfsprogs prackage. And
*therefore* it should not go into main.
[1] Or, alternatively, we shall decide that the jurisdiction you are
in is so strange and crooked that we are unable to make meaningful
promises about what your local courts will or won't let you do.
--
Henning Makholm "I ... I have to return some videos."
