--On Friday, September 11, 1998, 3:59 PM +0200 "Stephane Bortzmeyer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > It seems there are a lot of problems with the non-free section, for instance > CDROM vendors who do not bother to check every licence individually and who > exclude the whole non-free tree. Basically, it comes from the fact that > non-free gathers packages which have very different reasons to be non-free. > > It seems that, for CDROM resellers or mirror sites, the most intelligent split of free would be instead > between "non-free-but-can-be-put-on-CDROM" and "non-free-other"? > > I assume this discussion was already held, so if someone can explain. The main reason is that we don't want to assume the legal responsibility for deciding what can and cannot be distributed. A secondary reason is that the licenses involved can be particularly hairy -- some stuff in "non-free-but-can-be-but-on-CDROM" won't then allow that CDROM to be sold commercially, or it can be sold commercially, but not bundled with a commercial product, or it requires the CDROM vendor to give the author a copy of the CDROM, or a postcard or... Either all of those licences would have to be lumped into "non-free-other", or the CDROM vendor will still have to vet every license anyway. By just having one "non-free", and warning the vendors of the issue, we let them know they have to examine the licenses themselves, and they assume responsibility for any mistakes in licensing.
