Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote: >> Are there any policies surrounding what may go into the source >> packages, that Debian distribute, as far as license is concerned? > > Yes. The source packages for things that are in main and contrib must > satisfy the DFSG.
Thanks. >> Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say, >> RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by >> Debian otherwise? > > Post-sarge, RFCs with the traditional "no modification" license will > be non-free and will need to be moved from the orig.tar.gz and/or the > diff.gz. To be perfectly clear, by the "no modification" license, are you referring to the following license? This was copied from RFC 3454. Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Have Debian evaluated the new RFC copying conditions? Quoting <ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3667.txt> section 3.3: a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual property rights in the Contribution: (A) to copy, publish, display and distribute the Contribution as part of the IETF Standards Process or in an Internet-Draft, (B) to prepare or allow the preparation of translations of the Contribution into languages other than English, (C) unless explicitly disallowed in the notices contained in a Contribution [as per Section 5.2 below], to prepare derivative works (other than translations) that are based on or incorporate all or part of the Contribution, or comment upon it, within the IETF Standards Process. The license to such derivative works not granting the ISOC and the IETF any more rights than the license to the original Contribution, (D) to reproduce any trademarks, service marks or trade names which are included in the Contribution solely in connection with the reproduction, distribution or publication of the Contribution and derivative works thereof as permitted by this paragraph. When reproducing Contributions, the IETF will preserve trademark and service mark identifiers used by the Contributor of the Contribution, including (TM) and (R) where appropriate, and (E) to extract, copy, publish, display, distribute, modify and incorporate into other works, for any purpose (and not limited to use within the IETF Standards Process) any executable code or code fragments that are included in any IETF Document (such as MIB and PIB modules), subject to the requirements of Section 5 (it also being understood that the licenses granted under this paragraph (E) shall not be deemed to grant any right under any patent, patent application or other similar intellectual property right disclosed by the Contributor under [IETF IPR]). b. The Contributor grants the IETF and ISOC permission to reference the name(s) and address(es) of the Contributor(s) and of the organization(s) s/he represents or is sponsored by (if any). >> Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is >> parsed, and become part of the implementation? In other words, >> where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC because it is the >> preferred "source code" to make modifications to. > > The above situation is one where the work is not distributable at all > until the depenency on the RFC is removed, as the RFC itself cannot be > distributed under the terms of the GPL. That is a clear answer. Alas, in some situations, it may be difficult to remove that dependency. For example, Libidn derive data tables from RFC 3454. Thanks, Simon
