On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 15:29:22 +0530 Mahesh T. Pai wrote: > MJ Ray said on Sun, Jul 11, 2004 at 10:24:26AM +0100,: [...] > > As you can read elsewhere, I am not convinced that debian-legal is > > equipped or wise to try to analyse licences in abstract. > > I'm afraid that this list will have to do both - analyse licenses in > general, and also scturinise specific packages when brought to our > notice. > > In the specific case of licenses which are outright non-free, we need > to tell DDs / upstream that packages under a particular license cannot > be in the archives. > > Analysis of specific packages would be necessary, when issues like > possible patents, out right license violations, dependency issues, > license incompatibilities, etc. arise. > > To me, this seems like a two stage process, we analyse the license > first, and the package later on.
I agree. Focussing on packages only would require too many analyses,
indeed.
We must also collect some sort of license database, so as we can say
"this package is solely under the L license, hence it cannot be
DFSG-free for sure".
Of course a number of packages have a less simple status (strange
license couplings, patents involved, additional requirements or
permissions, ...) and must be scrutinized on a case-by-case basis; but
many other packages would be a waste of time if we had to review the
same licenses again and again or to dig in the archives to recall if
some old package in a similar situation was judged free or not...
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