On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 02:08:59PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote: > On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:58:49PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > Ocaml did. It was in non-free when i picked it up in 98, and has after > > long discussion with upstream become free enough for main. I don't think > > it was the only reason for the licence change, but my contact with > > upstream and the work i did on the package led to them considering my > > opinions more favourably or something such. > > In the context of this discussion, do you think that the fact that Ocaml > was in non-free was of any significance, or was it rather your
I think yes, because it accruded my credibility with upstream, and thus made them more receptive to my arguments. > personal contact/persuasion that made the license change possible? Or > did you only initiate the discussion because you were maintaing Ocaml in > non-free? I contacted them as debian maintainer of ocaml, and the package was non-free at that time, and almost orphaned by its previous maintainer. > FWIW, I've convinced a couple of authors to license their semi-free > (which in my context usually means: only free for academic use) under a > true Free Software license, without having the package in non-free. One Sure, but this will not work for everyone. > could even argue that once a package is in non-free that might be good > enough for some upstreams, so they don't feel the urge to relicense in > order to get their stuff into main. Every case is different. Yep, i agree. But once we don't support non-free anymore, only our users lose. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]