On 2004-06-23 19:12:41 +0100 Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
We've got a lot of licenses like this. This is why we review packages,
not licenses.
I see. Were you absent from the discussion earlier this year about
whether these summaries would be useful? Now that we've seen them in
action a few times, I feel that they are doing more harm than good
because they always seem to include "this is a free licence" or "this
is a non-free licence". Too much is being focused on these binary
distinctions and the interesting part is whether the ITP'd or P'd
software is free or non-free, really.
Summary authors, is it possible to refine them so that we don't have
this sort of outright statement? It would seem more helpful to
summarise to the licence author "here are debian-legal's concerns
about this licence" than "we have decided you are wrong".
Further, should we stop summarising when the licence author has not
asked for our opinion and go back to the old rough consensus method
for handling packages? Maybe we could keep a link-heavy "collected
advice for maintainers" licence list based on our discussions (on
wiki.debian.net), but that was not the original suggested scope for
these summaries and I don't think they can do both well.
Finally, it seems important for the discussion to be allowed time to
settle. The previous MPL draft summary was posted only 2 days after
the last thread began. That's not long enough. Copyright problems are
important, but the servers don't catch fire if we think about them
awhile.
Awaiting replies with interest,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
