Re: There are _TWO_ discussions here

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote:

> On 29 Jul 1997, Guy Maor wrote:
> 
> > Just in case it's not emminently clear to all, there are two things
> > being discussed here.
> > 
> > First, Christian and I (and possibly others), want to make contrib
> > packages DFSG compliant.  This is an important issue, and practically
> > nobody has responded to it.
> 
> It was always my understanding that the packages in contrib were not Free
> Software. Although the new DFSG doesn't explicity declare this to be the
> case, I seems to be implied.

The DFSG itself does not say anything about our "distributions"--it's the
policy. You are right, until now contrib was ``non-free'' too, but this is
what seems to confuse some people.

> The distinction that I would hate to see blurred is the distinction
> between not-free for distribution restrictions and not-free for other
> considerations.

The problem is that it's hard to specify any general rules for a
``non-free-but-freely-distributable'' (i.e. contrib) package. Of course,
we could write some guidelines for this as with the DFSG, but this is
probably against our goals--we want to encourage the authors to produce
"free" software, not "contrib" software.

> This distinction is very helpful in promoting the distribution of
> contrib,

moving 6 packages from contrib and non-free wouldn't make much difference 

> while providing protection from the legal implications of the
> licenses of packages currently found in "non-free". 

I wouldn't call it `protection' if we encourage CD manufacturers to
include contrib and have 11 packages in contrib now which have severe
license `problems'. (That's 42 total packages, so 26%.) The problem is
that `the average maintainer' does not know enough about licenses (or does
not want to know enough :) to distinguish contrib from non-free.

And all CD manufacturers (as you and me) rely on their decision...

> While I appreciate that merging the two would make archive maintainance
> simpler, I don't think it will get more software on a CD.

We don't propose to "merge" contrib and non-free. We propose to make all
contrib packages apply to the DFSG too. This will move only 6 packages
from contrib to non-free--that's not much. But it will make life a lot
easier for maintainers and a lot safer for CD manufacturers.

And according to Bruce' last message, this change will also allow
"contrib" to go on the official CD image--which is currently not included
because of the `license troubles'.

> I would rather see the DFSG expanded to speak to the issues of package 
> dependence on non-free software and what the implications are for that 
> dependence on the "freedoms" that can be associated with the dependent 
> code.

Some people said that the way they interpret the DFSG, these dependency
rules are already implied :-) 


Thanks,

Chris

--                  Christian Schwarz
                   schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com
                  schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
                       
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