Answer not found - Sarge upgrade policy

[Cristi Savu]

Dear gentlemen
 
I have a very simple question I'd like to ask, and 
I'm sorry to bother you for this: Does the Sarge ISO package get updated on a 
regular basis (let's say, monthly or something) ?
 
I'm asking this because I want to know whether is 
there any point to download (again) this distribution from time to 
time
 
Thank you very much for your time
 
Cristi Savu

Re: Answer not found - Sarge upgrade policy

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

please read the following pages, sarge=testing and sarge will become stable, 
when it's ready... and unstable will always be called sid.
 
http://www.debian.org/releases/
http://www.debian.org/devel/testing


regards, 
 Holger


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Re: Answer not found - Sarge upgrade policy

[Jean Christophe André]

Selon Cristi Savu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I have a very simple question I'd like to ask, and I'm sorry to bother
> you for this: Does the Sarge ISO package get updated on a regular basis
> (let's say, monthly or something) ?

The DVD & CD iso images are updated weekly actualy:
  http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/
  http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

You can download them through HTTP or FTP, but it would be much
more optimized if you use jigdo to re-create the new images from
the old one, added a few download for new updates each week.

Just "apt-get install jigdo-file" and run "jigdo-lite".
Using Woody, add "deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ woody jigdo"
to your "/etc/apt/sources.list" then run "apt-get update" just before
the "apt-get install jigdo-file".

Hint: use "netselect" to choose the best Debian mirror for you.

Cheers, J.C.
--
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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Nick Phillips]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:17:34PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> > Requiring that distributors of a piece of software refrain from making
> > accusations of patent infringement regarding the software itself is
> > consistent with the goal of upholding the freedoms of users over that
> > software.  As such, we consider license condititions acceptable that
> > terminate a licensee's rights to the software if that licensee raises a
> > patent lawsuit claiming that the software in question infringes their
> > patent(s).
> 
> Agree with this, though for clarity I would say "their own patent(s)" for
> this last.

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:56:16PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> My answer, so far, is "I have yet to see such a restriction that I think
> should be acceptable."
...
> I don't see anything to qualitatively differentiate petting a cat if you
> distribute the software, to giving up your rights to unrelated patents if
> you distribute the software.


I'm not sure I understand where you're at now. Earlier, you seemed to
agree with the kind of restriction that Josh mentioned.

As for the "unrelated patents"; well, fine, but that's starting to go
into detail already. If you actually could agree with what Josh suggested,
that looks to me like that implies that you believe that "yes, in principle
it could be acceptable to have a license impose some restriction on the
exercise of software patent rights by a licensee". And that's all I'm
trying to establish at the moment -- whether there is the possibility of
a consensus that it is acceptable to have in a license a restriction,
however minimal, on the use of software patents by a licensee.


> Perhaps if you started with a particular restriction that *you* thought
> would be acceptable, we would stand a better chance of figuring out if there
> is actually a consensus in the project that that restriction is acceptable,
> and expand out from there.

I guess I think that there's more chance of getting something useful out
of this if we try to focus and do one thing at a time. To me, it seems
that we have a strong tendency to home in on details far too early, and
I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.



Cheers,


Nick


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Matthew Garrett]

Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> However, many software licenses choose to go further than that,
> requiring that distributors refrain entirely from engaging in patent
> lawsuits against any authors of the software, regardless of whether
> those lawsuits are related to the software or not.  We do not support
> the practice of patenting software, but we find it unacceptable for
> licenses to place requirements which pertain to other, independent
> works.  We believe this policy is consistent with the principles behing
> in Debian Free Software Guideline 9, "License Must Not Contaminate Other
> Software".

There are two types of clause that fall into this catagory, and I think
it's helpful to distinguish between them. The first terminates your
patent license if you sue for unrelated patent issues, and the second
terminates your copyright license. Earlier discussion on -project seemed
to suggest that people were more or less happy with the first, and less
happy with the second.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]

[Mark Brown]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 03:29:35AM +, MJ Ray wrote:

> I stopped making the periodic summaries and no-one has complained yet.
> I don't think that communicating what -legal is discussing is very
> interesting to most debian people. I am keeping notes for my own sake at

For what it's worth I'd noticed that the summaries had vanished - things
like the Eclipse thread had been making me want to use them.

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."


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Bug#292330: project: UTF-8 as default

[Harald Thingelstad]

Package: project
Severity: wishlist
Tags: l10n


Most basic problems with use of UTF-8 (both in languages and standard
libraries) should have been fixed now, and as I see it, it's time to
head for easier integration of UTF-8, system-wide.

By this, I'm not talking about enforcing this character code on the
whole Debian system, but see to that:
1) Installing systems with UTF-8 is easier, also with locales not
strictly in need of this. UTF-8 as default is not necessarily my
ultimate goal (as the title suggests), but having the option of using
UTF-8 (or other encodings) system-wide, no matter what languages are
chosen.
2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly.

The problem with choosing one character encoding per language is multilingual 
environments.
When one language suggests one encoding and another language something else, 
trying to mix these languages will always give you unreadable text. 
One way or another.

As written in http://www.jw-stumpel.nl/stestu.html:
"Traditionally, for storing texts in various languages, special encoding
methods are used, for instance Latin-1 (1 byte per character) for
West-European languages with accented letters, KOI-8 for Russian, or
EUC-JP (2 bytes per character) for Japanese.

Only very limited 'mixing' of languages (..) is possible in these
systems."


Some examples:
1)
I've been working in Eritrea lately, setting up computers in a school.
Eritreans have nine official languages, all treated equally. 
One is Arabic, using arabic script of course.
Two, Tigre and Tigrinya, uses an ancient script called Geez. Normal
western left-to-right, but more than two hundred letters look nothing
like Latin.
The rest of the languages use the latin alphabet.
Adding to that, the official language in school, secondary level and up, is
English. That doesn't stop them from wanting to use their own languages from 
time to time.
So the situation is this:
They'll mostly use English, but sometimes other languages, covering
up to three script systems. This means documents, file names, etcetera.
And even when using English desktop settings, they'll want be able to
read these other scripts.
Only option is to use UTF-8 on the whole system, no matter what
language.

2)
There's an ethnic minority in this country of mine, called Sami. They have 
their own language. Basically they use latin characters, but with some 
extensions only covered in UTF-8.
The rest of us use ISO-LATIN-1, also called ISO-8859-1. Popular
eight bit charset, that is.
Now: Most of us only see Sami language occasionally. We can't even read
that other language, so it doesn't bother us if ISO-8859-1 is default.
Debian-installer enforces it quite heavily.
But some people use both. More or less one, more or less the other.
So what do you make your default language, when one of them (the most
popular) will give you gibberish in every second word?


So:
So for people only using English, it doesn't matter. Nor much in Western
Europe.
But the rest of the world uses several languages and even several
scripts. Especially when using computers, english-dominated as they are.
Character encodings not supporting all characters can only be used for a
few languages at a time. Redhat solved this a long time ago, so why
can't we?

I think it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-1-386
Locale: LANG=nb_NO, LC_CTYPE=nb_NO (charmap=ISO-8859-1)


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 11:49:32AM +, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > However, many software licenses choose to go further than that,
 
"few"

> > requiring that distributors refrain entirely from engaging in patent
> > lawsuits against any authors of the software, regardless of whether
> > those lawsuits are related to the software or not.  We do not support
> > the practice of patenting software, but we find it unacceptable for
> > licenses to place requirements which pertain to other, independent
> > works.  We believe this policy is consistent with the principles behing
> > in Debian Free Software Guideline 9, "License Must Not Contaminate Other
> > Software".
> 
> There are two types of clause that fall into this catagory, and I think
> it's helpful to distinguish between them. The first terminates your
> patent license if you sue for unrelated patent issues, and the second
> terminates your copyright license. Earlier discussion on -project seemed
> to suggest that people were more or less happy with the first, and less
> happy with the second.

That's overstated in this context. There's no real objection to the
former not because it's free, but because it's irrelevant. When the
termination clause is bound only to the patent license, then we have a
free copyright license and a non-free patent license. We don't care
about the patent license, because we've never required patent licenses
on anything; having this extra non-free one simply doesn't matter. I'm
not aware of *anything* in main that has a free patent license. Our
usual informal policy of "ignore patents until somebody starts to wave
them around, then drop the offending thing like a hot rock" applies.

It would be an error to generalise this to say "non-free patent
licenses are okay" (or any derivatives), because our current approach
is founded entirely on the fact that the patent system is broken and
gives us no other real options. In the event that it were somehow
fixed to behave similarly to copyright (I don't know if this is
possible, but I can't rule it out), then we probably should start
requiring free patent licenses.

-- 
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Is the Pain Unbearable?

[Ronnie Clayton]

Stay Elongated All Night 
http://www.aupd.com/p/coupon/famqq   


Renounce your announcements uosb.com/b.php

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

Bug#292330: project: UTF-8 as default

[Roger Leigh]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Harald Thingelstad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Most basic problems with use of UTF-8 (both in languages and
> standard libraries) should have been fixed now, and as I see it,
> it's time to head for easier integration of UTF-8, system-wide.

Agreed.

There are a few cases where UTF-8 support is not "quite there", for
example on the console, where compose keys don't play nicely with
UTF-8 mode.  I don't think these few cases should prevent us making
progress with the system overall, however.

> By this, I'm not talking about enforcing this character code on the
> whole Debian system, but see to that: 1) Installing systems with
> UTF-8 is easier, also with locales not strictly in need of
> this. UTF-8 as default is not necessarily my ultimate goal (as the
> title suggests), but having the option of using UTF-8 (or other
> encodings) system-wide, no matter what languages are chosen.

I think the locales package is the place to start this.  For etch, I
would like the UTF-8 locales to be the default for all languages (with
language-specific encodings being offered as alternatives).  This is
the opposite of the situation for Sarge, where language-specific
encodings are the default, with UTF-8 as an alternative.  This would
have the effect of migrating all new installs to UTF-8, which still
allowing the use of old encodings if required.  I switched all my
locales to UTF-8 only a year or so ago, and just iconv files as
required.

In some places, UTF-8 should be enforced, for example package control
files and changelogs.

> 2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly.

This is a policy issue.  Not all packages need to handle it, so this
should be a reccommendation rather than a requirement.  For example,
there are specialised packages that only work with certain specific
encodings, and these should probably not be a priority to change.
Certainly, all general-purpose packages should be UCS-aware, though.


Regards,
Roger

- -- 
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Bug#292330: project: UTF-8 as default

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 26-01-2005 15:53, Roger Leigh wrote:

>>>2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly.
> 
> 
> This is a policy issue.  Not all packages need to handle it, so this
> should be a reccommendation rather than a requirement.  For example,
> there are specialised packages that only work with certain specific
> encodings, and these should probably not be a priority to change.
> Certainly, all general-purpose packages should be UCS-aware, though.

I agree: Recommendation only.

A concrete case is with my favourite file manager / editor, Midnight
Commander. The package in Debian does not support UTF-8, and switching
to a fork of the package that does may break other things in the program
(because each development branch of the program has different focus, as
I understand the situation).

Similar situation may be for other packages: UTF-8 support may be
avoided in favor of greater stability (similar to the IPv6 support,
where some packages still choose deliberately to avoid it).


 - Jonas

- --
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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 11:41:31PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:17:34PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> > > Requiring that distributors of a piece of software refrain from making
> > > accusations of patent infringement regarding the software itself is
> > > consistent with the goal of upholding the freedoms of users over that
> > > software.  As such, we consider license condititions acceptable that
> > > terminate a licensee's rights to the software if that licensee raises a
> > > patent lawsuit claiming that the software in question infringes their
> > > patent(s).

> > Agree with this, though for clarity I would say "their own patent(s)" for
> > this last.

> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:56:16PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> > My answer, so far, is "I have yet to see such a restriction that I think
> > should be acceptable."
> ...
> > I don't see anything to qualitatively differentiate petting a cat if you
> > distribute the software, to giving up your rights to unrelated patents if
> > you distribute the software.

> I'm not sure I understand where you're at now. Earlier, you seemed to
> agree with the kind of restriction that Josh mentioned.

Matthew Garrett's subsequent message pinpoints where I am with this:
terminating patent licenses in response to patent claims is fine, requiring
distributors to allow royalty-free distribution if they're going to engage
in distribution at all (as in the GPL) is fine, but terminating copyright
licenses in response to defense of one's patent rights is not ok.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Bug#292330: project: UTF-8 as default

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:53:52PM +, Roger Leigh wrote:

> > By this, I'm not talking about enforcing this character code on the
> > whole Debian system, but see to that: 1) Installing systems with
> > UTF-8 is easier, also with locales not strictly in need of
> > this. UTF-8 as default is not necessarily my ultimate goal (as the
> > title suggests), but having the option of using UTF-8 (or other
> > encodings) system-wide, no matter what languages are chosen.

> I think the locales package is the place to start this.  For etch, I
> would like the UTF-8 locales to be the default for all languages (with
> language-specific encodings being offered as alternatives).

Then please begin coordinating with the respective language teams involved
with the debian installer, to ensure that we have a usable UTF-8 based
console environment for all languages.  (Or hand us a d-i based graphical
installer sprung fully-formed from your forehead, whichever you find
easier.)  There's more to providing a working UTF-8 capable second-stage
installer than just setting "UTF-8" in the locale name, and this is a major
issue that makes UTF-8 a non-viable default for sarge.

> > 2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly.

> This is a policy issue.  Not all packages need to handle it, so this
> should be a reccommendation rather than a requirement.  For example,
> there are specialised packages that only work with certain specific
> encodings, and these should probably not be a priority to change.
> Certainly, all general-purpose packages should be UCS-aware, though.

I hope you're just conflating UCS-2 with UTF-8 here.  UCS-2 is a crap
charset, which there's no reason at all for most Unix programs to support.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[OSS]

Steve Langasek wrote:
On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 11:41:31PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote:
 

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:17:34PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
   

Lost attribution, Josh I think
 

Requiring that distributors of a piece of software refrain from making
accusations of patent infringement regarding the software itself is
consistent with the goal of upholding the freedoms of users over that
software.  As such, we consider license condititions acceptable that
terminate a licensee's rights to the software if that licensee raises a
patent lawsuit claiming that the software in question infringes their
patent(s).
   


I'm not sure I understand where you're at now. Earlier, you seemed to
agree with the kind of restriction that Josh mentioned.
   

Matthew Garrett's subsequent message pinpoints where I am with this:
terminating patent licenses in response to patent claims is fine, requiring
distributors to allow royalty-free distribution if they're going to engage
in distribution at all (as in the GPL) is fine, but terminating copyright
licenses in response to defense of one's patent rights is not ok.
 

Steve,
If I follow you correctly
   A -  writes program #49 and licenced under 
GPL-compliant-patent-defending-licence
   B -  distributed program #49 to C-D (may or may not have made 
enhancement/change)
   C - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
   E - may have patents infringed by program #49, but is otherwise 
uninvolved & takes no action
   F - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
We know that no option is available to use the licence to defend against 
F, unless we use the unacceptable path of cross-contamination, etc. (ie 
any software patent defence terminates all software licences with patent 
defence clause)

Josh wants C to lose their licence to use program #49 as a result of 
legal action as a mechanism to defend A, B & D's rights to develop, 
distribute & use program #49.

You want C to lose any patent licences granted for program #49. How does 
that help defend program #49 and hedge software patents?

Dave

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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 12:27:44PM -0700, OSS wrote:

> Steve,
> If I follow you correctly
>A -  writes program #49 and licenced under 
> GPL-compliant-patent-defending-licence
>B -  distributed program #49 to C-D (may or may not have made 
> enhancement/change)
>C - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
> legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
>E - may have patents infringed by program #49, but is otherwise 
> uninvolved & takes no action
>F - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
> legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
> We know that no option is available to use the licence to defend against 
> F, unless we use the unacceptable path of cross-contamination, etc. (ie 
> any software patent defence terminates all software licences with patent 
> defence clause)

> Josh wants C to lose their licence to use program #49 as a result of 
> legal action as a mechanism to defend A, B & D's rights to develop, 
> distribute & use program #49.

I don't think that Josh has said that -- especially given that you do not
have to have a copyright license to *use* a program.  So in your example,
any copyright license restrictions you impose are no more or less effective
than a patent license that terminates in response to a patent suit.

> You want C to lose any patent licences granted for program #49. How does 
> that help defend program #49 and hedge software patents?

When did I say that it did?  The proper way to defend the program against
party C is by shooting him, obviously; but that's out of scope for copyright
licenses.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Bug#292330: project: UTF-8 as default

[Roger Leigh]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:53:52PM +, Roger Leigh wrote:
>
>> > By this, I'm not talking about enforcing this character code on the
>> > whole Debian system, but see to that: 1) Installing systems with
>> > UTF-8 is easier, also with locales not strictly in need of
>> > this. UTF-8 as default is not necessarily my ultimate goal (as the
>> > title suggests), but having the option of using UTF-8 (or other
>> > encodings) system-wide, no matter what languages are chosen.
>
>> I think the locales package is the place to start this.  For etch, I
>> would like the UTF-8 locales to be the default for all languages (with
>> language-specific encodings being offered as alternatives).
>
> Then please begin coordinating with the respective language teams involved
> with the debian installer, to ensure that we have a usable UTF-8 based
> console environment for all languages.  (Or hand us a d-i based graphical
> installer sprung fully-formed from your forehead, whichever you find
> easier.)

I wasn't trying to cause offence with my comments.  I fully appreciate
this isn't a trivial task.

For the last few weeks, I've been working on just that.  I'm slowly
writing a full framebuffer-based terminal emulator which will support
all the bi-di string specifications of ECMA-48, with full separation
between data and presentation components.  It will use FreeType (or
maybe even Pango) for the font rendering, and so should provide the
same level of text rendering support (and quality) you get under X,
though I plan for it to be a bit faster than the X terminals by more
intelligent glyph caching.

http://www.whinlatter.ukfsn.org/gtk/uterm-0.1.0.tar.bz2

There's not much to see yet.  I've written some of the basic classes,
plus most of the ECMA-35 and -43 support.  Over the last week or so
I've become a little side-tracked writing a code table editor, for
charset/element/area mapping/designation/invokation, but I hope to
have something usable within a few months.  Once the basic table
parser (input handling) and terminal classes are done, we can start on
the framebuffer driver.

(If anyone out there can provide any examples, either code or simple
explanation, of how the ECMA-48 data component and presentation
components normally interact, that would be of great benefit.  This is
required for bidirectional nested string handling, but it's not clear
what the implications are for line wrapping and the mappings between
the two components.  I'm also looking to get hold of several ISO
standards documents, but they are rather expensive.  If anyone can
help me get hold of any copies of these standards, that would also be
of immense help.)

Once I've got the basics written, I'll be making the arch repo
available.  If anyone's interested, feel free to get in touch.

> There's more to providing a working UTF-8 capable second-stage
> installer than just setting "UTF-8" in the locale name, and this is
> a major issue that makes UTF-8 a non-viable default for sarge.

I'm not suggesting this should be done for sarge, which is why I said
I'd like it for etch.  I'll be honest: I hadn't actually considered
the implications for the installer; I was rather more interested in
the working system after installation.

>> > 2) See to that all Debian packages handles UTF-8 properly.
>
>> This is a policy issue.  Not all packages need to handle it, so this
>> should be a reccommendation rather than a requirement.  For example,
>> there are specialised packages that only work with certain specific
>> encodings, and these should probably not be a priority to change.
>> Certainly, all general-purpose packages should be UCS-aware, though.
>
> I hope you're just conflating UCS-2 with UTF-8 here.  UCS-2 is a crap
> charset, which there's no reason at all for most Unix programs to support.

No.  UCS == Universal Character Set, a.k.a. ISO-10646.  I wasn't
referring to any specific encoding thereof, hence the lack of any
qualification.

A package's UCS support might involve using wide characters and
streams, particularly for more sophisticated processing and layout.
In this case it's more than just "UTF-8", even if that's what is used
for input and output.


Regards,
Roger

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Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]

[Francesco Poli]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:32:44 + Mark Brown wrote:

> > I stopped making the periodic summaries and no-one has complained
> > yet.

I'm not used to complain if a volunteer seems to not have enough time to
get a job done... (unless he/she has promised to do so, but this is not
the case now IIRC).

> > I don't think that communicating what -legal is discussing is
> > very interesting to most debian people.

Not very interesting to most people, that's guaranteed!  :-(

But useful anyway.

And summarizing should make all this stuff

* less boring for not so interested people

* quicker to read for people lacking time to keep up with long and
  technical legal discussions

[...]
> For what it's worth I'd noticed that the summaries had vanished -

So did I.

> things like the Eclipse thread had been making me want to use them.

Definitely.
I personally read all Eclipse-related debian-legal threads, but I would
have waited for a summary if I could *hope* to see one...

-- 
  Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
..
  Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4
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Re: documentation x executable code

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 02:45:29AM +, MJ Ray wrote:
> "craig" wrote:
> > > >(b) This prevents the documents from being adapted for another
> > > >purpose (suchas documenting ways of funding free software).
> > regardless of how admirable a trait this is, it is not a requirement of the
> > DFSG, and never has been. [...]
> 
> Has craig just walked off the map by allowing restrictions on the
> intended purposes of derived works? 

try reading and responding to what i actually wrote, not to your lame
straw-man bullshit.

nothing in the DFSG requires that a free license must allow merging with
an incompatible license.  if it did, GPL software would be non-free as it
does not allow merging with incompatible licenses.

> How would the above differ much from a licence saying "use for
> whatever you want, except genetics"?

because there is no restriction on use.  there is, as always, only a
restriction on re-licensing.  you are comparing chalk and cheese.

> Later in the same message, craig also seems to accept that invariant
> sections in programs are also OK, as long as it's not the main code
> or help, but maybe I misinterpreted:

i specifically said "additional invariant sections in the documentation", and
i implied that that was OK because some things don't matter, some things are
too trivial for sane people to care about.


> I do wonder if craig only ever adds to software, so as not to
> misrepresent the original author by changing or deleting code.

documentation is not software.  software is not documentation.

only a moron thinks that they are the same or that they must be treated
exactly the same.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   (part time cyborg)


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[MJ Ray]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> I don't think that Josh has said that -- especially given that you do not
> have to have a copyright license to *use* a program. [...]

That "given" was only clarified in English law fairly recently, added by
implementing some EU directive in the 1990s IIRC.  In general, it seems
a little risky to rely on it. If we know a particular place's copyright
law is in use, or if someone smarter says "this holds everywhere and
here's references" then I'd be happy with that broad claim. :-/

Anyway, most debian developers create and distribute derived works, don't
they? So, we have to worry about more than use anyway...


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[MJ Ray]

I'm sorry that Nick feels misunderstood. The point I was trying to
make was that the proposition as written was far too broad and agreeing
with it probably means agreeing with popular bogeymen like the "pet a cat"
licence.

Nick wrote:
> So the question I was trying to ask was "do we believe that there are
> *any* restrictions which would be acceptable?" -- with the intention that
> if/when the answer turned out to be "yes", then we could discuss precisely
> which restrictions they would be.

Yes, there are at least some restrictions which are acceptable. Those
are ones which do not contradict the DFSG.

I think a key concept is that patents and copyright are orthogonal and
should not be mixed together. It's fine for the copyright permission to
require fulfilling some restrictions that fit the DFSG. It's also fine
for the patent licence to do that. I think it's bad for the copyright
permission to add conditions to the patent permissions, and it runs a big
risk of making software patents affect swpat-free places but I'm not 100%
clear how to relate that to freedom directly and in general.

Even so, I suggest that general anti-patent patent licences do not follow
the DFSG. Compare it with a copyright-based situation where I give you
many pieces of software under DFSG-compatible copyright licences; then
we get in some litigation over a particular piece of licensed software
with claims going both ways.  Can the other licences be free *and*
terminate when you claim against me?  (I think it's clear that the
disputed licence can terminate if you breach it (like the GNU GPL), but
I don't think even that can for just a counter-claim. Less sure, though.)


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Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]

[MJ Ray]

Mark Brown > > For what it's worth I'd noticed that the summaries had vanished -
Francesco Poli > So did I.

Thanks for that and the comments off-list. What would the period
summaries have done to help you with the Eclipse thread? Or did you
mean the long licence summaries? What would they have done? Personally,
I've been ignoring that thread because it's very large, I dislike Java
and it didn't seem to be heading towards consensus yet.

I have less time now, so I changed from period summaries, which are
interesting statistics to me but not much practical use, to making notes
that help me with a real problem: how do I answer when asked whether
I think some software is free software?

Do the long licence summaries do much besides fuelling the project
red-top's debian-legal hate campaign? As soon as someone starts drafting
one, it runs reports about -legal "ruling" on a licence. Successes are
rarely reported, as good news is not news. Really, you're better off
reading planetdebian if you want to know what's going on.


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 01:26:27AM +, MJ Ray wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > I don't think that Josh has said that -- especially given that you do not
> > have to have a copyright license to *use* a program. [...]

> That "given" was only clarified in English law fairly recently, added by
> implementing some EU directive in the 1990s IIRC.  In general, it seems
> a little risky to rely on it. If we know a particular place's copyright
> law is in use, or if someone smarter says "this holds everywhere and
> here's references" then I'd be happy with that broad claim. :-/

My point was that, given that the proposed copyright license restriction
does *not* protect against the described attack (in most jurisdictions),
this example doesn't really justify why we would want to allow such a
restriction.  This restriction would have other real impacts on distributors
and modifiers, as you mentioned, which we should be concerned about -- but
the OP didn't address those at all.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Adeodato Simó]

[I'm trying to follow the discussion in hopes of better understanding
the issue in order to form an opinion about it. Please excuse me if I
need big amounts of cluebat with this...]

* OSS [Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:27:44 -0700]:
> Steve Langasek wrote:

> >Matthew Garrett's subsequent message pinpoints where I am with this:
> >terminating patent licenses in response to patent claims is fine, requiring
> >distributors to allow royalty-free distribution if they're going to engage
> >in distribution at all (as in the GPL) is fine, but terminating copyright
> >licenses in response to defense of one's patent rights is not ok.

> Steve,
> If I follow you correctly
>A -  writes program #49 and licenced under 
> GPL-compliant-patent-defending-licence
>B -  distributed program #49 to C-D (may or may not have made 
> enhancement/change)
>C - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
> legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
>E - may have patents infringed by program #49, but is otherwise 
> uninvolved & takes no action
>F - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches 
> legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
> We know that no option is available to use the licence to defend against 
> F, unless we use the unacceptable path of cross-contamination, etc. (ie 
> any software patent defence terminates all software licences with patent 
> defence clause)

> Josh wants C to lose their licence to use program #49 as a result of 
> legal action as a mechanism to defend A, B & D's rights to develop, 
> distribute & use program #49.

> You want C to lose any patent licences granted for program #49. How does 
> that help defend program #49 and hedge software patents?

  If I understood correctly, C sues A over "patent infringed by program
  #49", so if falls in the first group described by Josh, and so it
  would be fine that program #49's license terminates C's rights under
  this circumstances. (First group on Josh's mail, as I said.)

  Now imagine, to describe the second group:

- D, to whom B provided a copy of p#49, sues A over a patent
  infringement NOT related to p#49 at all. As per Matthew Garrett's
  post, license may be of two kinds, each of them mandating that:

(a) D's license to use any program written by A and licensed
under License LA (or equivalent) terminates completely.

(b) D's patent licenses, for patents holded by A and applicable
not only in p#49, but in every program written by A and
licensed under License LB (or equivalent), terminate.

  As Matthew said, (a) is not acceptable, and (b) may be ("people were
  more or less happy with [it]").

  So I have a question: what is the _practical_ result of License LB in
  (b) above, that D can't use A's LB-licensed programs any more, unless
  D purchases the relevant patent licenses? (Or perhaps the "can't use
  ..." should read "risks being sued by A over patent infringement").

  And: if D immediately stops using p#49 and the rest of affected
  programs, may A sue D too?

  Thanks,

-- 
Adeodato Simó
EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | PK: DA6AE621
 
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Josh Triplett]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 12:27:44PM -0700, OSS wrote:
>>Steve,
>>If I follow you correctly
>>   A -  writes program #49 and licenced under
>>GPL-compliant-patent-defending-licence
>>   B -  distributed program #49 to C-D (may or may not have made
>>enhancement/change)
>>   C - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches
>>legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
>>   E - may have patents infringed by program #49, but is otherwise
>>uninvolved & takes no action
>>   F - determines their patent is infringed by program #49 and launches
>>legal action (presumably against A, B, & D)
>>We know that no option is available to use the licence to defend against
>>F, unless we use the unacceptable path of cross-contamination, etc. (ie
>>any software patent defence terminates all software licences with patent
>>defence clause)
>
>>Josh wants C to lose their licence to use program #49 as a result of
>>legal action as a mechanism to defend A, B & D's rights to develop,
>>distribute & use program #49.
>
> I don't think that Josh has said that -- especially given that you do not
> have to have a copyright license to *use* a program.

That's correct, and thanks for realizing that; I suggested that it's
acceptable to terminate their license to the program, but that does not
terminate their rights to *use* the program, only to copy, modify, and
distribute it.

>>You want C to lose any patent licences granted for program #49. How does
>>that help defend program #49 and hedge software patents?
>
> When did I say that it did?  The proper way to defend the program against
> party C is by shooting him, obviously; but that's out of scope for copyright
> licenses.

Heh. :)

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Taking a position on anti-patent licenses (was ' Re: Bug#289856: mdnsresponder: Wrong license')

[Adeodato Simó]

* Adeodato Simó [Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:10:39 +0100]:

>   So I have a question: what is the _practical_ result of License LB in
>   (b) above, that D can't use A's LB-licensed programs any more, unless
  ^
  uhm, that's probably wrong, then? (After
  re-reading Steve's mail, triggered by Josh's
  reply.)
>   D purchases the relevant patent licenses? (Or perhaps the "can't use
>   ..." should read "risks being sued by A over patent infringement").


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EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | PK: DA6AE621
 
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Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]

[Josh Triplett]

MJ Ray wrote:
> Mark Brown > > For what it's worth I'd noticed that the summaries had 
> vanished -
> Francesco Poli > So did I.
>
> Thanks for that and the comments off-list. What would the period
> summaries have done to help you with the Eclipse thread? Or did you
> mean the long licence summaries? What would they have done? Personally,
> I've been ignoring that thread because it's very large, I dislike Java
> and it didn't seem to be heading towards consensus yet.

I suggest that you are wise to avoid that thread, and it is an excellent
example of why sometimes summaries would not be useful.  Any attempt to
be "unbiased" about that thread would actually *create* a bias by giving
undue "equal" treatment to quite radical points of view that are
undeserving of that equal weighting.  And any attempt to suggest that
the points of view that most people tend to believe (both on and off of
-legal) is more correct will attract accusations of bias by the summarizer.

- Josh Triplett


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