On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:04:22 +0900 Osamu Aoki wrote: [...] > On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 09:18:42AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: [...] > > I think that the "dissident test" and others are indirectly mentionned to > > everyone who wants to join Debian: > > > > http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/nm/trunk/nm-templates/nm_pp1.txt?revision=1246&view=markup > > > > 60 PH7. How do you check if a license is DFSG-compatible? > > 61 > > 62 PH8. There are a few "tests" for this purpose, based on (not really) > > common > > 63 situations. Explain them to me and point out which common problems can > > 64 be discovered by them. > > Agh ... who added this ... test should be done only to DFSG. The > proposed "dissident test" does not work and is proven to be wrong in > some cases already.
I disagree: the dissident test was not proven wrong. It is a thought experiment helping to spot non-free restrictions, and it is grounded in DFSG #1 and #5. > > > I do not find these tests particularly useful, but as long as they are > > promoted > > this way, we are likely to see people using them on this lit. > > Some people (Henning Makholm et al.) were on debian-legal around 2003 > using this "dissident tests" to shoot down many non-GLP/BSD licenced > packages. Please note some of the casualities such as ipadic were later > accepted to Debian main with some efforts. > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=641070 > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2011/09/msg00010.html > > I hope my summary page gives good idea what has been. > > http://wiki.debian.org/IpadicLicense I think that your analysis is flawed. The Ipadic license indeed includes an ambiguous clause: "which is distributed substantially in the same form as set out herein". This part of the license could be interpreted as a non-free restriction on modification failing DFSG#3, or as just a qualifier for the types of distributions that require the attachment of the "NO WARRANTY" section. I think that having such an ambiguity in a license is a lawyer-bomb and I feel very uncomfortable with such a clause in a package distributed in main. But the other issue is definitely worse: | such intended | distribution, if actually made, will neither violate or otherwise | contravene any of the laws and regulations of the countries having | jurisdiction over the User or the intended distribution itself This is non-free, as already explained by Steve Langasek in https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/09/msg00076.html Your counter-arguments are flawed, IMHO: * the dissident test is not about impossible notification requirements (maybe you are confusing it with the desert island test?) * section 7 of the GNU GPL v2 does not discriminate against persons or groups of persons: it does not impose anyone to comply with laws *as a condition for the permission grant*; it merely says that other conflicting legal obligations do not excuse the licensee from the conditions of the license; this is completely different * the rant about Che Guevara is very confusing and I think it fails to make any useful point * I have many doubts on the acceptability of the CPL v1.0, hence seeing its presence in main proposed as a reason to accept other dubious or non-free software into main strikes me as very unfortunate * what RedHat does (or does not do) seems to be of little relevance, when one has to evaluate whether a package belongs in Debian main > > As I noted there, such extreme interpretation of license text can yield > GPL2.0 to violate DFSG #5. I repeat: this is not the case! [...] > > > If you think they create more noise than signal, perhaps you or others can > > consider asking for a change to the NM templates via a bug reported to > > nm.debian.org. > > I agree. > > I think we should clean some wiki-pages holding such extreme positions. I instead think that the wiki page that you created holds misguided positions and wrong interpretations. The fact that the FTP-masters accepted ipadic into main does not impress me much: as far as I can tell, the FTP-masters have gradually become looser and looser in abiding by the Debian Social Contract and in properly checking packages for DFSG-freeness. Unfortunately, I should add... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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