On Wed, Sep 24, 1997 at 03:14:00PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > Debian project policy is to not treat other distributions as the enemy. > > Red Hat has not been bad to us, even if they have never explicitly stated > their social contract with the free software community. They GPL-ed their > code, which is more than others have done. If they choose to protect the > "RPM" trademark, we'd call it something else. If the GPL is not sufficient > protection, we are in much bigger trouble than just having problems with > our package tool. > > We have to look at what outsiders are doing and learn from it. We should > not have "not invented here" syndrome. Agreed agreed agreed! But analyze my statements more carefully. You will notice that I have not cited POSIX as something to be avoided and it is a "competing distribution mechanism". RedHat is not an "enemy" but it is an incompatible legal construct in lieu of a concise definition of terms on their part. It is as fundamentally dangerous to play with the trademarks and brand names of incorporated legal entities as it is to cut and paste copyrigted code into a GPL'd project. I know that we could "just switch" but I would encourage you to envision what this would mean to the "newbie" users that are in the fold. The ramifications could be significant and extremely irritating. If RedHat is a well behaved entity they will work with other organizations to finalize the POSIX packages implementation and implement it to the letter. This is the standards process. Where is the .rpm review board? who sits on it? how is a final decision reached as to whether a change should be made to the .rpm format? can I join? This is not open and not a standard and in abscence of any other statement it is the trademarked intellectual property of a corporate entity that is growing fast enough to attract investor capital and perhaps groom itself to go public. Warning! Beware! The last thing we need is package maintainers waking up to find a cease and desist in their mailbox one morning. Ok, I'm paranoid! So what! It's very healthy in today's computer industry. Just ask the .zip extension! E -- _______________________________________________________________________ Ean Schuessler Director of New Products and Technologies Novare International Inc. The Unstoppable Fist of Digital Action --- Some or all of the above signature may be a joke
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