This one time, at band camp, Ben Finney said: > Magnus Holmgren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Since DFSG apparently (according to the recent discussion) only > > deals with copyright and restrictions imposed by the copyright owner > > It's quite apparent from reading the DFSG that there's no such > limitation. The DFSG in particular are concerned with the rights that > pertain to the software as received by the user, and are not limited > in domain to any specific legal system.
As I understand the issue, there are roughly three forms of things which can encumber software: copyrights/licenses, trademarks, and patents. Iterating over that list in a non-linear order: trademarks are a no-op. The DFSG allows for name-change clauses (DFSG 4). This allows us to modify and redistribute without infringing trademarks if need be. No freedom issue here. copyright/license issues are the mainstay of -legal for a very good reason - these are cross jurisdictional. If I obtain a piece of software under a certain license, I am bound by the terms of that license whether I live and work in the UK or Zimbabwe. Patents on the other hand are completely jurisdiction dependant. If there is a software patent in the US, are you of the opinion that French Debian developers should be bound by it? In particular, the Chinese government has shown itself to be quite happy to overlook Euro-American patents; which legal system are you going to hold Chinese Debian developers to? While it's true that the DFSG doesn't address these forms of restrictions directly, arbitrarily stating that we should now respect random patent rulings in random jurisdictions is not particularly helpful. It has been Debian's policy that we care about patents only when they are actively enforced, and that seems a reasonably prudent path to me. But to be clear, this is not a freedom issue per se - we just can't do anything about the government, even though the license itself might be free. So, if the domain keys patent is under active enforcement, this software probably should not be approved by the ftp masters. If it is not under active enforcement, and is under a free license, there is no reason not to have it in main. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
