On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:27:07PM -0400, Walter Landry wrote: > Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hello debian-legal. > > > > I don't know why, but Brian has been bothering me about claiming the QPL > > is non-free. I agree with the emacs thing, and am working on a solution > > to it when time permits, and upstream has also agreed to it in > > principle, so this should be solved before the now imminent (whatever > > this means for debian release cycle :) sarge release. > > Great
Another question about this, if i am to remove these emacs files, is it ok to remove them only from the binary package, or do they need to be kicked out of the source tarball also. I believe that removing the offending code from the source code is not a problem, since these files are clearly distributable, even in debian, what is of doubious legal status is loading them in emacs. I am preparing the 3.08 release of ocaml, and i was to late in sending out the request for clarification, so the change is not in. In fact my mail crossed the 3.08 announcement. And i don't really want to do multiple source tarball uploads, which is rather messy. > > Anyway, it would rightly surprise me if the QPL would be reveled > > non-free after all this years of use and the KDE controversy it was > > linked to, and i believe that we have more than just ocaml as QPLed > > programs in debian. > > It sometimes happens that the first vetting of a license doesn't catch > all of the problems. For example, there were problems in the GNU FDL > that were not caught until much later. The IBM CPL also has some > minor problems that came up later. License analysis is a slow, > ongoing affair. > > > So i request the help of debian-legal to help me clarify this thing, > > and either make an official statement that the QPL is non-free, or > > shut Brian up, and let me back to work on my packages. > > There is no official mouthpiece of debian-legal. However, I would say > that the consensus on debian-legal is that the QPL is not DFSG-free. > The "choice of venue" and the "send changes back" clauses are both > problematic. Well, what i want to know is if this is really the official consensus, or just wishfull thinking of a few vocal debian-legal participant. Also, if the QPL was to be declared non-free, i would act on it when seeing it publicly announced on debian-announce, and i believe i am not the only maintainer doing this. After all, if you take such decisions, then you should stand public scrutiny on them. In any way, i will by no way act on them until i receive satisfied responses to the doubts i have over the reasoning behind the above two problems you mention. And also a proposal on how to make the licence non-free, instead of the "please switch to the GPL" which is sure to be received with laugthers or even some anger when i go upstream with it. Friendly, Sven Luther