The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re: qmail license

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Stuart Lamble wrote:

> 
> bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens) wrote:
> >DJB has no problem with our using and distributing Qmail as long as we _don't_
> >_modify_ the .src.tgz file. We can put any changes we want in the binary
> >package and the .diff.gz file.
> >
> >I think this is a bit strange, but I said I'd ask the developers about it.
> >Does this sort of restriction belong in the main distribution?
> 
> The question I have is, what does he mean by "modify"? If he's aiming to
> keep the md5sum identical to the upstream .tar.gz, it's a no-hoper: just
> repackaging source in (say) qmail-1.0.orig, compared with qmail-1.0,
> guarantees that the md5sum will change. (If it doesn't, something's
> screwy :)
> 
> That's the only reason I can think of offhand for not wanting the original
> sources modified, but allowing other modifications in the diff..
> 
I suspect that his concerns have more to do with the implied
responsibility for maintianing someone elses changes to his code.
Requiring the source to stay the same, keeps him in control of source code
management while continuing to give the user the freedom to modify the
package. If he allows the modifications to filter into the source, then
with the release of those "modified" source packages (potentially under
the same file name, with all the copyright left unchanged and no reference
to the changes) identification of the "true" upstream source becomes
problematic.
I think he is just trying to keep other peoples bugs from sullying the
quality and control of software. Other, divergent, work can still be
incorporated, at least giving the way Debian does packaging, without
impacting his requirements, and these requirements don't seem to impede
the free distribution of either his sources or our changes.
Pine had a somewhat similar requirement that and binaryies released with
modifications to the source (either by diff or explicit change) should
have it's release number appended with an L to indicate local
modification. This was not the part of their copyright that forced it into
non-free and would not, by itself, have done so.
I don't think that this restriction impacts any of the criterion for free
distribution. If the copyright holder feels the same way, then I see no
problem with this in the main distribution.

Luck,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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