Am 06.07.98 schrieb sr1 # os.inf.tu-dresden.de ... Moin Sven!
SR> According to my research only 38 out of the 235 packages in non-free SR> can be distributed commercially. I didn't understand some licenses, so SR> you might find some more packages. For example you can distribute most of my non-free packages like doc-html- w3, hwb, cecillia, ... SR> But this is a lawyers job, neither Debian nor most of the CD makers SR> will have the ressources to find out what the creator of the licenses SR> wanted to say, what the license says and what other lawyers will read. I don#t understand that. We already do that for the main part. Where#s the problem? The maintainer asks the upstream maintainer, if we#re allowed to sell his programm on CD. Do you think, an upstream maintainer is interested to answer the copyright questions of every Debian CD producer? SR> If we want to make life easier for CD makers we should: SR> - Convince the authors to change the license. That is nonsense, for example most american universities use non-free license and the author himself could not change the license. SR> - Support DFSG-free alternatives. The user should choose if he want to use free or non-free software and non the Debian team! As user I need some non-free programms like gs 5.0 or spice. And a lot of programms in non-free are relative free. SR> - Convince the authors to make their licenses more readable. ??? SR> For most non-free packages the authors are making life difficult for SR> the cd venders, and Debian (aka we) can't do anything about this SR> unless the author changes the license. We shouldn#t force the author to use a special license. That#s very bad! The Debian maintainer could suggest to change the license, but in a lot of cases this is not possible: patents, etc. SR> Producing a free Linux distribution makes life easier for cd vendors. Again, at the moment the user needs non-free packages. This is a fact. SR> The vendorsdon't need non-free software; some users do. But the users SR> have to accept that the vendors have to adhere to law. As a user I wouldn#t buy a main/contrib only CDROM. cu, Marco -- Uni: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fido: 2:240/5202.15 Mailbox: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tu-harburg.de/~semb2204/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
