Le Lun 22 Mai 2006 01:46, Steve Langasek a écrit : > On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 01:06:42AM +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> > I personally thinks it hurts our users, and as a secondary effect, > > us. Beeing distributable is a property that should not be depends > > upon the time, the color of your hair, or the phase of the moon. > > Java license (especially clause 4) makes the distribution of a > > specific version of java beeing revocable, which can hurts a lot of > > users that may then depends on it. A re-licensing e.g. would not be > > the same, because the last previous version that had a > > distributable license would still be allowed to stay in non-free > > until full deprecation or even for life. > These are fine reasons why Sun should be encouraged to make Java free > software, instead of merely making it redistributable; or why we > should educate users about the importance of Free Software and why > they should think twice before accepting non-free solutions. This > might even be an argument for Debian discontinuing non-free > altogether. > But I don't really see that they apply as reasons to keep Java out of > non-free. Non-free is, well, non-free: very little, if any, of the > stuff in there is distributed under terms that would prevent a > copyright holder from later forbidding us from distributing the > existing work, AFAIK, and there's no reason in general that we should > be *happy* with the licenses of any works in non-free (though some > individuals in the community may be). I understand your point, but given that make-jpkg (aka java-package) exists and works great (i've been a user of it since quite a lot of time, and that had never failed me), I don't see much an improvement over java-package. beeing in non-free versus make-jpkg is IMHO making the tacit promise that java will remain here forever (I mean in our archive, I really hope java won't stay in *non-free* forever, I'd be really happy to see it enter main). If it has to be removed from non-free at some point, because of Sun exercising one of their retroactive clause, then I think we have failed our users. we are *currently* allowed to redistribute java, I agree with that: yes, if we have any problem, removing java from the archive *is* a valid action, and saves us from any trouble (every clause is written under the form [ do $foo or don't ship / stop shipping java ]).. My concern is with the "currently". IMHO, *even* in non-free, packages should be distributable for the lifetime of one stable release (e.g. for something like 5 years -- it's an example). I know some packages are (or have been) in non-free because debian benefits of an exception to have the right to distribute those. I've always hopped those exceptions honoured that fact (meaning that a package that enters non-free will be able to remain here in a predictable manner for the lifetime of that stable release). If not, I really think we should re-evaluate some bits of non-free, because to me, it sounds like a lie. even if it's non-free and that our support is going to be harmed in many ways due to the non-freeness of the package, the two properties that non-free should ensure are: * the fact that we are allowed to distribute the packages ; * a minimal durability of that package in the archive. else, we are proposing random bits of shit, that any user is already able to install himself from non-official sources. I don't see any added value that we have without point 2. -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O [EMAIL PROTECTED] OOO http://www.madism.org
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