On Mon, Aug 17, 1998 at 11:57:26AM +1000, Drake Diedrich wrote: > On Mon, Aug 17, 1998 at 03:11:10AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > You have fulfilled your duty making it available in the same directory as > > the rest of the source. However, for Debian, being a huge distribution, with > > Some shades of grey: > > 1) GPL is available on some ftp site or CD somewhere > 2) GPL is on the same ftp site or CD set. > 3) GPL is in the proposed verbatim/ directory > 4) GPL is in the main/ directory > 5) GPL is in the same directory > 6) GPL is in the same tar archive > 7) GPL is included in the same file > 8) Through cryptographic magic the GPL is atomically attached to the > package, making the package useless if the GPL is not also present. > > Current practice is 4.
Mmh. What I don't like about the current situation is that you can go to the ftp site, download many (binary) packages and don't get a single license, until someone tells you that it is (somewhat hidden) in the base files package. On a Debian system (for example a Debian CD), I think the current situation is good enough, considering that base-files is essential. > Manoj is suggesting moving up a directory level > to 3. Marcus is proposing we move to 6 when packaged, and 5 when unpacked. A small correction: My proposal is to keep the current situation, and when dpkg can manage several copies of the same file in several packages, we should include the file /usr/doc/copyright/GPL in every GPL'ed package etc. When unpacked on a Debian system, only one copy will ever be on the system, so on a Debian system, the situation will be like now. On the ftp site, we would ship the license with the software then. If unpacked somewhere else, a copy is still available. Currently, we don't have the technical functionality to achieve this, though, and even I don't want 1500 copies of the GPL on every Debian installation (although I could live with it on my system). Thank you, Marcus -- "Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
