Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:33:02AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: Frank Lichtenheld wrote: Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. I support deleting the summaries. I think that page would be good for a general description of how debian-legal works, linking to unofficial documents as they are prepared and official documents on other parts of the site. I had intended to write this before, but I am still not up-to-date with wml. Here is my suggested text: [...] Committed with minor corrections. Feel free to send further patches in my direction :) pLicenses currently found in debian main include:/p ul liGNU General Public License (common)/li liGNU Lesser General Public License (common)/li liGNU Library General Public License (common)/li liModified BSD License (common)/li liPerl Artistic license (common)/li liApache License/li liMIT/X11-style licenses/li lizlib-style licenses/li liLaTeX Project Public License/li liPython Software Foundation License/li liRuby's License/li liGlasgow Haskell Compiler License/li liPHP License/li liW3C Software Notice and License/li liOpenSSL License/li liSleepycat License/li liCommon UNIX Printing System License Agreement/li livhf Public License/li liNo problem Bugroff license/li lipublic domain (not a license, strictly speaking)/li /ul Would it make sense to add links to the licenses here where possible? Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.djpig.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Sat, May 28, 2005 at 11:12:40AM +, MJ Ray wrote: search would be a pain. The issues don't divide neatly to me. Yes, it's not for the most part a question of the manner and style of the discussion rather than the topic itself. There's some personal development required by some readers too, IMO. For example, why do you junk the whole mailbox and not just the flamey threads? I've switched to using the It's more normal for me to do as you suggest or to leave the mailbox and go back and do so later. When I deliberately delete everything it is mainly due to feeling that I'm only reading a very small proportion of the traffic (often after letting the mailbox build up for a while) together with many of the other discussions being old and mostly settled. There's also the fact that if your fingers are hovering over the delete thread keys it's much more of a default action than it would otherwise be. A thread of moderate interest that on another list might be read because that's what's happening to most of the list might go unread for just the same reason. If that happens often enough it can be the entire mailbox that is ignored. It's essentially a case of the problematic threads drowning out the rest of the list one way or another - either I will actively decide that the list isn't worth reading at a given time or the fact that I'm reading the list on the basis that I'm going to ignore much of what's there makes me do just that. Mark Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't actually think of a way to do this off the top of my head (I'd say that normally people don't actively try to start these large discussions) and it would require enforcement by the active members of the list. How do you enforce this, though? We don't have a tradition of strong moderation here and a lot of posters don't even bother to follow the debian lists code of conduct (link below), which I think would make a big improvement here. The few attempts at pointing out futility haven't had much effect yet, IMO. Yes, it would be very tricky to achieve - there's not a situation like we have with say -release where there are some people who are definitely in a position of authority. -- You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Joerg Jaspert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10301 March 1977, MJ Ray wrote: Joerg, if you want to make your life easier, try opening bugs about any NEW licence questions and cc -legal, Bugs? Where? Package: general? Or does -legal now have an on bts entry? Stuff in NEW usually doesnt have a place for bugs [...] Maybe open was the wrong word for that situation. The Developers' Reference suggests there will be an open wnpp bug for a fully NEW package. Why not add to the end of that and cc? My *personal* experience with this list is just not so that I see a big value posting to it. (Im mostly a reader on -legal) When hunting for an ftpmaster post, I found a surprising number of licensing problems that get advice, help and/or resolutions in between the few long thread tennis games. I think a more active interest from the NEW queue handlers would improve things even further, giving even more practical, useful work. I found one thread started by you on debian-legal ever, Bug#244289: xball: Package includes non-free source code. You were essentially right, as far as I can tell, so there was no other opinion offered. The bug was resolved when the maintainer was convinced too. Other than that, I noticed two posts giving information, although one seemed a bit flamey to me. Why not get a little more experience before generalising? -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 08:10:06PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote: I have recently been wondering if it would be possible to come up with some way of splitting -legal up in order to make it more approachable for outsiders. Unfortunately it seems that -legal is prone to enormous threads that often appear either obscure or unproductive (normally flamy) and these threads can easily swamp the rest of the traffic. I know that when the bigger threads blow up I often end up opening my -legal mailbox, glancing at the list of messages and immediately deciding that it's not worth my time to read it. This experience is extremely off putting and means that I can sympathise with what Jeorg is saying. I can't actually think of a way to do this off the top of my head (I'd say that normally people don't actively try to start these large discussions) and it would require enforcement by the active members of the list. Maybe a debian-legal-announce list that only accept signed email from DD with Reply-To set to debian-legal and forwarded to debian-legal ? That would allow to mark some posts as important and easy to find and would not block discussion on debian-legal. Some discussions on debian-legal are not productive for the case at hand, but can be productive in the grand scheme of things. Cheers, -- Bill. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On 5/27/05, Bill Allombert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe a debian-legal-announce list that only accept signed email from DD ... ... or maybe from people with some legal credentials somewhere? :-) (I would not be eligible by either criterion. Which might be a good thing.) Cheers, - Michael
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On 10298 March 1977, Frank Lichtenheld wrote: As some of you might know some time ago I created a web page for listing information about licenses discussed by debian-legal at http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. Comments, objections? I would love that page working (ie new license summaries added). Would, for some obscure license crap make my life easier if such a thing appears in NEW. :) But then it should be maintained, and I know that its impossible to get something useful out of -legal (except you define long threads as useful). -- bye Joerg Ganneff kde und tastatur? passt doch nicht mit dem nutzerprofil windepp zusammen :) pgpTvSPSrRUgt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Joerg Jaspert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would love that page working (ie new license summaries added). Would, for= some obscure license crap make my life easier if such a thing appears in NEW. :) But then it should be maintained, and I know that its impossible to get something useful out of -legal (except you define long threads as useful).=20 Well, this is the first ftpmaster post to legal I've seen for months and it's a troll :-/ Pot and kettle one, too. How often do ftpmasters open bugs and ask debian-legal for analysis of a licence? Looking at the archive for Feb and Mar 2005, pretty much everything was done at the request of package maintainers or outside consultations. Who started threads? debian-legal contributors: 28 threads Packagers: 15 Obvious* debian developers or users: 12 Other people (outside the project?): 19 ftpmasters: 0 * - obvious to me, as in @debian or I am a DD/DU or so on. I did find one ftpmaster-initiated thread, back in January It appears answered within a day and fixed within two weeks. That was the last ftpmaster message of any sort until this. For the most part, ftpmasters are absentee landlords. Unsurprisingly, debian-legal concentrates on the consultations, packagers and developers who actually post to the list. If ftpmasters have tasks they want debian-legal to do, they should communicate them, rather than just flaming us for not reading minds, and continuing the ftpmasters reputation for communication. Joerg, if you want to make your life easier, try opening bugs about any NEW licence questions and cc -legal, asking for someone to summarise with references. If that doesn't work for you, you could cc a particular contributor, or we could keep a list of volunteer contact people to help with licensing bugs if you don't want to use a mailing list. -- MJR/slef http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Tue, 24 May 2005 02:33:02 +0100 MJ Ray wrote: Frank Lichtenheld wrote: Shortly after creation this stalled however as nobody created summaries anymore, probably because for many discussions it proved to be difficult if not imopossible to summarise many of the discussions without either reproducing the entire discussion or to have an equally lengthy discussion about the summary... My view is that the earlier stage of the summary drafting process was used as a stick to beat debian-legal towards firey heat death, so contributors simply stopped making them. That's probably true, but really really unfortunate, IMHO. Maybe a new and totally uncontroversial licence will come along, but anything which has DFSG-related questions left open will almost always have some supporters and some detractors, so not suit the red/green judgement. Well, clearly non free licenses need almost no summary at all. Summaries are useful especially to recall subtle issues that were found out long before (so that we can avoid performing the same analyses over and over again...). Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. I support deleting the summaries. I agree that, as it is now, that page is not useful... :-( I hope that we can find a better way to keep track of past debian-legal discussions: otherwise we are at risk of forgetting the issues that were discovered and/or deciding in inconsistent ways about similar clauses... I think that page would be good for a general description of how debian-legal works, linking to unofficial documents as they are prepared and official documents on other parts of the site. I had intended to write this before, but I am still not up-to-date with wml. Here is my suggested text: [...] I read it and it seems quite good. Well done! :) -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgp7xbduk4n3R.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Revamping the debian-legal website (was Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Mon, 23 May 2005 19:20:42 -0400 Nathanael Nerode wrote: Frank Lichtenfeld wrote: Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. It would really, really, really help if things like the currently-unofficial debian-legal FAQ, some of the various FAQs about the GFDL, etc., were integrated into the debian-legal website. Yes, I think that MJ Ray's proposed text could be a starting point. Information about the freeness tests we use, etc., is the sort of thing which belongs there. Also, I really like the existing essay on the three categories of software, and the comments about how our list differs from the FSF and OSI lists; I do *not* want to lose that. [...] Remember to get appropriate copyright licenses from everyone whose FAQs you integrate and to specifically put the page under those licenses (not just the default OPI for the website), with appropriate copyright notices. We should attempt to follow our own recommended best practices. (Which, incidentally, is another thing to add to the website: best practices in copyright and licensing maintenance...) Fully agreed! Oh -- what license would debian-legal like for its own web pages? I think the main choice to make is copyleft (meaning GPL) or highly permissive (in which case I don't care which one, but it would be good to settle on one preferred one). My preferred non-copyleft license is the Expat (a.k.a MIT) license: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt I suggest highly permissive, because this site is going to contain memes which we want to spread, and allowing unlimited reuse would IMHO be good for that. It's probably a good idea. ... OK, after making all those suggestions, it's time to put my money where my mouth is. I volunteer to do this work if nobody else wants to (or indeed to do it with someone else if they do want to). I'll even put it on high priority; I think I could get quite a lot done very quickly, since the information exists, but just has to be integrated. Great! This is really appreciated, indeed. :-) -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgp3kVanpjRQA.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Francesco Poli wrote: I hope that we can find a better way to keep track of past debian-legal discussions: otherwise we are at risk of forgetting the issues that were discovered and/or deciding in inconsistent ways about similar clauses... I've noted before that it sounds to me more like a catalogue of discussions is wanted. Unfortunately, we don't seem to know at the time which discussions are significant, or at least it is difficult to get consensus on it. I think the FAQ and other works in progress are useful and it has been encouraging to see work on new FAQs like documentation recently. If debian-legal contributors keep notes on their own sites (as I do), it may be useful to link them: what do others think or have? -- MJ Ray (slef), K.Lynn, England, email via http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Hi. As some of you might know some time ago I created a web page for listing information about licenses discussed by debian-legal at http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ Shortly after creation this stalled however as nobody created summaries anymore, probably because for many discussions it proved to be difficult if not imopossible to summarise many of the discussions without either reproducing the entire discussion or to have an equally lengthy discussion about the summary... Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. Comments, objections? Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.djpig.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 03:47:05PM +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote: As some of you might know some time ago I created a web page for listing information about licenses discussed by debian-legal at http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ Comments, objections? Maybe it is sufficient to refer to this page more often and to explicitly request updates on various lists and in various threads. I remember that you announced the page but never visited it before :-(( I'm sure it is quite useful. Jens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
In linux.debian.legal Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. Seconded. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Revamping the debian-legal website (was Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Frank Lichtenfeld wrote: Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. It would really, really, really help if things like the currently-unofficial debian-legal FAQ, some of the various FAQs about the GFDL, etc., were integrated into the debian-legal website. Information about the freeness tests we use, etc., is the sort of thing which belongs there. Also, I really like the existing essay on the three categories of software, and the comments about how our list differs from the FSF and OSI lists; I do *not* want to lose that. If you delete anything, *just* delete the summary list, and update the rest of the page to reflect that. I think the official debian-legal website should form more of an About debian-legal, what we do, and how we do it site. Maybe we can put license summaries in later, but I think they're not the most important thing there. Remember to get appropriate copyright licenses from everyone whose FAQs you integrate and to specifically put the page under those licenses (not just the default OPI for the website), with appropriate copyright notices. We should attempt to follow our own recommended best practices. (Which, incidentally, is another thing to add to the website: best practices in copyright and licensing maintenance...) Oh -- what license would debian-legal like for its own web pages? I think the main choice to make is copyleft (meaning GPL) or highly permissive (in which case I don't care which one, but it would be good to settle on one preferred one). I suggest highly permissive, because this site is going to contain memes which we want to spread, and allowing unlimited reuse would IMHO be good for that. ... OK, after making all those suggestions, it's time to put my money where my mouth is. I volunteer to do this work if nobody else wants to (or indeed to do it with someone else if they do want to). I'll even put it on high priority; I think I could get quite a lot done very quickly, since the information exists, but just has to be integrated. However, I would need website access of some sort in order to do that, which I don't have. --Nathanael Nerode -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Frank Lichtenheld wrote: Shortly after creation this stalled however as nobody created summaries anymore, probably because for many discussions it proved to be difficult if not imopossible to summarise many of the discussions without either reproducing the entire discussion or to have an equally lengthy discussion about the summary... My view is that the earlier stage of the summary drafting process was used as a stick to beat debian-legal towards firey heat death, so contributors simply stopped making them. Maybe a new and totally uncontroversial licence will come along, but anything which has DFSG-related questions left open will almost always have some supporters and some detractors, so not suit the red/green judgement. Since this hasn't really worked out I propose to delete this stuff again until someone comes up with a better idea how to better present the work of debian-legal. I support deleting the summaries. I think that page would be good for a general description of how debian-legal works, linking to unofficial documents as they are prepared and official documents on other parts of the site. I had intended to write this before, but I am still not up-to-date with wml. Here is my suggested text: pThis site presents the opinion of debian-legal contributors on how certain licenses follow the a href=$(HOME)/social_contract#guidelinesDebian Free Software Guidelines/a (DFSG). Most of these opinions were formed in discussions on the a href=http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/;\ debian-legal mailing list/a in response to questions from potential package maintainers or licensors. We welcome enquiries from maintainers considering particular licenses, but we encourage most maintainers to use one of the common licenses: GPL, LGPL, BSD or Artistic./p pSoftware packaged for debian is normally classified into four categories. There is free software (main), non-free software (non-free), free software which depends on some non-free software (contrib) and software which cannot be redistributed (not included). a href=$(DOC)/debian-policy/ch-archive.htmlDebian Policy section 2/a explains exactly how the DFSG are applied to the archive. If in doubt, maintainers are asked to email debian-legal about licenses, including the text of any new license into the body of the email./p pdebian-legal is advisory. The actual decision-makers are the ftpmasters and the package maintainers. However, if one cannot convince most of the generally liberal debian-legal contributors, it's probably not clear that the software follows the DFSG./p pLists are maintained by the a href=http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html;Free Software Foundation/a (FSF) and the a href=http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html;Open Source Initiative/a (OSI). Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations. It is possible to have a package containing software under a free license with some other aspect that makes it non-free. Sometimes, debian-legal comments on a license in abstract, not applied to any particular software. While these discussion can suggest possible problems, often no firm answers can be reached until some specific software is examined./p pYou may contact debian-legal if you have questions or comments about these summaries./p pLicenses currently found in debian main include:/p ul liGNU General Public License (common)/li liGNU Lesser General Public License (common)/li liGNU Library General Public License (common)/li liModified BSD License (common)/li liPerl Artistic license (common)/li liApache License/li liMIT/X11-style licenses/li lizlib-style licenses/li liLaTeX Project Public License/li liPython Software Foundation License/li liRuby's License/li liGlasgow Haskell Compiler License/li liPHP License/li liW3C Software Notice and License/li liOpenSSL License/li liSleepycat License/li liCommon UNIX Printing System License Agreement/li livhf Public License/li liNo problem Bugroff license/li lipublic domain (not a license, strictly speaking)/li /ul pIf you use one of these licenses, please try to use the latest version and edit no more than necessary, unless indicated otherwise. Licenses marked (common) can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses on a debian system./p pLicenses currently found in the non-free archive section include:/p ul liNVIDIA Software License/li liSCILAB License/li liLimited Use Software License Agreement/li liNon-Commercial License/li liFastCGI / Open Market License/li liLaTeX2HTML License/li liOpen Publication License/li liFree Document Dissemination Licence/li liATT Open Source License/li liApple Public Source License/li liAladdin Free Public License/li liGeneric amiwm License (an XV-style license)/li liDigital License Agreement/li liMoria/Angband license/li liUnarj License/li liid Software License/li liqmail terms/li /ul pPlease do not upload software under these licenses to the
