Matthew Woodcraft <matt...@woodcraft.me.uk> writes: > Russ Allbery wrote:
>> I think the core question is: why is base-files special? Yes, it's >> essential and all, but that doesn't address the case of packages being >> downloaded separate from Debian, or unpacked by hand, in which case we >> don't include a license. If we're legally fine with that, I'm having a >> hard time seeing the clear distinction between that and a dependency on >> another package including the license. >> Surely this has been discussed before? I don't remember seeing it on >> the debian-policy list since I started working on Policy. > There's a fairly lengthy discussion starting at > http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2000/11/msg00235.html Ah, yes, thank you. (I wish we'd been using the BTS then, since it's hard to determine from the thread what the conclusion was, but it seems to have mostly just died down without anything changing.) This is all about the GPL and whether having the GPL in base-files instead of included in the package violates the GPL. All the arguments being made in favor of the approach we stuck with seem to me to be equally applicable to having a separate license package and declaring a dependency on it. There doesn't seem to be any strong argument there that making the package essential buys us anything. So... it does feel like either what we're doing right now isn't okay according to the GPL and every package should have a copy, or creating a license package that other packages depend on would be fine. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87havqv14q....@windlord.stanford.edu
