On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 02:11:48PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 07:53:49PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 01:43:42PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 02:42:57PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > > > Branden, > > > > > > > > Again, you do great job in following the licence stuff, and > > > > felicitations to you and to the rest of the X strike force for the soon > > > > to be upcoming 4.3.0-1 package. > > > > > > Just my luck that when I finish the TODO list, some security holes show > > > up that have me embargoed. Oh well. > > > > Yeah, altough i would go ahead with the upload to unstable, and send the > > 4.2.1 security fixes trough the testing-proposed-updates queue. But you > > know best how to handle this. > > Once the current security issue is unembargoed, I'll be able to explain > why, in this particular case, that approach would be more work (for > little gain, if one regards security flaws as important).
Ok, as said, you know best. I am awaiting the 18th of february impatiently. > > > The reason is simple; I'm not subsribed to the XFree86 forum list, and I > > > generally try to avoid sending unsolicited mail to lists to which I > > > don't subscribe. Particularly in this case, as redistribution of my > > > message is not restricted (it was sent to 3 public forums already). > > > > Yes, altough notice that the original mails were forwarded from there. > > That doesn't really bear on my opinion about the courtesy of sending > unsolicited mails to lists I don't subscribe to. As opposed of the courtesy of speaking behind people's backs ? > > > Moreover, given David Dawes's statement that GPL compatibility simply > > > isn't on the XFree86 Project, Inc.'s radar screen as far as its > > > > Well, this might be so, but David is not the only one concerned here, > > True enough; this concerns the entire community (in my opinion), which > is why I sent it to three lists. The X.Org Foundation list as a conduit You see, i was not even aware of the X.Org Foundation mailing list, and i guess others are in the same case. So, if i had not been here, i would have been unaware of the problem. Sure, i am hardly important in this, but i guess that other people may be in my case. > to the X community, debian-x so that the team of developers and users > who are attentive to Debian X development are kept abreast of what I'm > doing, and debian-legal so the licensing experts there can > check my work. Josh Triplett recently noted[1] that the license in Unix > compress doesn't permit modification or redistribution of modified > versions, which means the code is not DFSG-free, and not Open Source by > most definitions I'm aware of. I don't know if the XFree86 Project, > Inc., considers that "Open Source" or not. I think they would not. Their main point of divergence over the GPL issue is that they have the added requirement that proprietary modifications are permitted. I hardly agree with that, but i usually respect the licence whishes of projects i contribute code to. In any case, no modification allowed is as wrong from that perspective as it is for debian. > > and i think the discussion you quoted and where he responded to RMS has > > been rather courteous (i am sure you don't say that in english) upto > > now. > > I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, and I don't think I did. I was just > reading copyright notices, license statements, and warranty disclaimers, > and doing a lot of grepping. > > > > licensing policy is concerned, I'm not sure the forum list needs to be > > > bothered with my analysis. The XFree86 Project, Inc., might not regard > > > any of the issues I raised as a problem, and if so, there's really no > > > point wasting their time with them. > > > > Still, it is a usefull entry point, and the [EMAIL PROTECTED] is the > > natural discussion place for issues related to the XFree86 Project, > > including licencing issues. > > Please feel free to forward my comments there, then. It was already done. > > > You may feel differently, however, and there is nothing stopping you from > > > redistributing my message to the forum list if you think that would be > > > productive. > > > > It was already done, altough with some kind of subpar email client which > > fully butchered everything. > > Well, that's a shame. You might ask the XFree86 mailing list admin -- I > think that is Georgina Economou -- if it would be worth the trouble of > re-sending with a more civilized MUA. I think it was already send in a civilized way. That said, Georgina has also been using one of those uncivilized email clients in the past, so ... > > I wanted to ask you before you did that though. > > You don't need my permission. It would be prudent to make sure you > don't abuse the XFree86 forum list, though. Well, this being a sensible issue and all, i thought maybe you would take a different discourse when addressing the XFree86 people directly, as opposed to discussing it in a separate place. But it was forwarded already all the same, so i guess it doesn't change a thing. And i don't think it is abusing the XFree86 forum list, i have been doing misguided people redirection in the past, and it has seen more spam and confused user-level questions that were more bothersom than a few mostly on-topic mails would be no problem. Friendly, Sven Luther
