Frank Lichtenheld wrote: > Shortly after creation this stalled however as nobody created > summaries anymore, probably because for many discussions it proved > to be difficult if not imopossible to summarise many of the discussions > without either reproducing the entire discussion or to have an > equally lengthy discussion about the summary...
My view is that the earlier stage of the summary drafting process was used as a stick to beat debian-legal towards firey heat death, so contributors simply stopped making them. Maybe a new and totally uncontroversial licence will come along, but anything which has DFSG-related questions left open will almost always have some supporters and some detractors, so not suit the red/green judgement. > Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again > until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the > work of debian-legal. I support deleting the summaries. I think that page would be good for a general description of how debian-legal works, linking to unofficial documents as they are prepared and official documents on other parts of the site. I had intended to write this before, but I am still not up-to-date with wml. Here is my suggested text: <p>This site presents the opinion of debian-legal contributors on how certain licenses follow the <a href="$(HOME)/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software Guidelines</a> (DFSG). Most of these opinions were formed in discussions on the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/";>\ debian-legal mailing list</a> in response to questions from potential package maintainers or licensors. We welcome enquiries from maintainers considering particular licenses, but we encourage most maintainers to use one of the common licenses: GPL, LGPL, BSD or Artistic.</p> <p>Software packaged for debian is normally classified into four categories. There is free software (main), non-free software (non-free), free software which depends on some non-free software (contrib) and software which cannot be redistributed (not included). <a href="$(DOC)/debian-policy/ch-archive.html">Debian Policy section 2</a> explains exactly how the DFSG are applied to the archive. If in doubt, maintainers are asked to email debian-legal about licenses, including the text of any new license into the body of the email.</p> <p>debian-legal is advisory. The actual decision-makers are the ftpmasters and the package maintainers. However, if one cannot convince most of the generally liberal debian-legal contributors, it's probably not clear that the software follows the DFSG.</p> <p>Lists are maintained by the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html";>Free Software Foundation</a> (FSF) and the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html";>Open Source Initiative</a> (OSI). Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations. It is possible to have a package containing software under a "free" license with some other aspect that makes it non-free. Sometimes, debian-legal comments on a license in abstract, not applied to any particular software. While these discussion can suggest possible problems, often no firm answers can be reached until some specific software is examined.</p> <p>You may contact debian-legal if you have questions or comments about these summaries.</p> <p>Licenses currently found in debian main include:</p> <ul> <li>GNU General Public License (common)</li> <li>GNU Lesser General Public License (common)</li> <li>GNU Library General Public License (common)</li> <li>Modified BSD License (common)</li> <li>Perl Artistic license (common)</li> <li>Apache License</li> <li>MIT/X11-style licenses</li> <li>zlib-style licenses</li> <li>LaTeX Project Public License</li> <li>Python Software Foundation License</li> <li>Ruby's License</li> <li>Glasgow Haskell Compiler License</li> <li>PHP License</li> <li>W3C Software Notice and License</li> <li>OpenSSL License</li> <li>Sleepycat License</li> <li>Common UNIX Printing System License Agreement</li> <li>vhf Public License</li> <li>"No problem Bugroff" license</li> <li>public domain (not a license, strictly speaking)</li> </ul> <p>If you use one of these licenses, please try to use the latest version and edit no more than necessary, unless indicated otherwise. Licenses marked (common) can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses on a debian system.</p> <p>Licenses currently found in the non-free archive section include:</p> <ul> <li>NVIDIA Software License</li> <li>SCILAB License</li> <li>Limited Use Software License Agreement</li> <li>Non-Commercial License</li> <li>FastCGI / Open Market License</li> <li>LaTeX2HTML License</li> <li>Open Publication License</li> <li>Free Document Dissemination Licence</li> <li>AT&T Open Source License</li> <li>Apple Public Source License</li> <li>Aladdin Free Public License</li> <li>Generic amiwm License (an XV-style license)</li> <li>Digital License Agreement</li> <li>Moria/Angband license</li> <li>Unarj License</li> <li>id Software License</li> <li>qmail terms</li> </ul> <p>Please do not upload software under these licenses to the main archive.</p> <p>Additionally, some software is not distributable (for example, has no licence at all), even in non-free.</p> <h2>Work in Progress</h2> <p>For help with interpreting the DFSG, you should check the <a href="http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html";>DFSG FAQ</a> that answers some common questions about the DFSG and how to analyse software.</a> <p>Manoj Srivasta has drafted <a href="http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html";>a position statement about the FDL</a> which is yet to be voted upon.</p> <p>Evan Prodromu has been delegated to work with Creative Commons to resolve DFSG-related problems with some of their licenses, as <a href="http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html";>summarised on Evan's page</a> and <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00031.html";>reported on debian-legal</a>.</p> -- MJ Ray (slef), K.Lynn, England, email via http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". 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