OK, you win, I will not continue with this. Do whatever you want with the bug. I'm sending this message to debian-legal, in case other people care.
On 8/30/06, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
For all you've said up to this point, the sound files being used could be in the public domain; in which case the only controlling copyright is that governing the packaging and support files.
OK, so I take files from the web and put them on packages. They could be in public domain, so there is no problem unless someone find that they are not, uh? I think it is silly. Copyright does not work this way. Something should be treated as copyrighted unless clearly stated it is under public domain.
That they are unknown to *you* is not grounds for an RC bug claiming that upstream is distributing files illegally.
And they are unknown to upstream. AFAIK, upstream does never claim that those files are under artistic license nor under public domain. It is not me. Why it is this so difficult to understand?
If you're going to claim that the license on these sounds is not what upstream and the packaging claim it is, the burden of proof lies with you.
Again, upstream does not claim he is copyright holder, and license for them is not specified. He only claims that he took the files from other sources. Even if the files are free, credit should be provided, and the origin clarified. As a positive example, look at this package (monsterz-data), it is a example of someone who has taken the time to correctly provided credits and copyright information for the included wav files: /usr/share/doc/monsterz-data/copyright To put all copyrights and references in detail for code and data can be boring, but omitting them makes no favor to free software. Please, note that including source code for data files is a different issue. This is about copyright problems on Debian main archive. I'm getting tired of all of this. There are still an important number of packages that carry unlicensed data with them, but I WON'T CONTINUE reporting bugs. Believe it or not, I have lots of more exciting things to do than searching for copyright problems and reporting them on my free time. And instead of people helping me to solve the problems and make Debian a better product, I got negative responses saying the problem is myself. Defending my position each time takes a lot of time (English is not my native language and my level of English is rather poor). Things I'm reporting are obviously not allowed by current Debian guidelines, so justifying and fighting for them each time is a waste of my time. If most people here thinks that we should not care about this, I would prefer that guidelines to be updated in consequence, so people who really care about this kind of copyright issues would know before choosing to use Debian. So Debian will remain 100% free unless we got sort of time for the next release, or something taken from the web is public domain unless someone demonstrate that it is not... So do not expect myself to give any more of my time to this. And you can downgrade the priority again or even close the bug if you want, I do not mind anymore. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
