Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Francesco Poli]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 08:42:51 + Niels Thykier wrote:
^^^

> Francesco Poli:
[...]
> > Could someone prod the FTP masters to analyze the issue and provide an
> > authoritative statement?
> > 
> > Thanks for your time.
> > 
> > 
> 
> It seems to me that you just did?

Maybe, but, as you can see (please note the above highlighted date), it
does not seem to work!:-(
I have repeatedly asked the FTP masters to analyze the issue and
express their opinion, but I have seen no reply yet.
Once again, I urged them to address this issue, but nothing seems to
have happened.

That's why I asked someone else to prod them: I was hoping to find
someone more likely to be listened to...


-- 
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. Francesco Poli .
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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Niels Thykier]

Francesco Poli:
> On Sat, 23 Apr 2016 15:34:44 + Niels Thykier wrote:
> 
>> Francesco Poli:
>>> [...]
>>
>> Hi,
> 
> Hello Niels,
> thanks for your prompt reply.
> 
>>
>> AFAICT, the FTP masters are the authoritative source on dealing with
>> license issues and they have not yet made a ruling.
> 
> Yes, and that's the problem: they seem to never answer, no matter who
> and when tries to ask for a reply.
> 

Sorry, but I cannot help with that part. :-/  Though please note that
silence might not be absence of progress.  As I recall, they were
completely silent during the zfs/linux license issue despite working on
it.  Can't say if that is an apt comparison though (I don't usually deal
with licensing issues).

> Am I writing to the right e-mail address?
> I originally wrote to  (which is listed in
> ), but I see that you wrote
> to .
> Which one should I use?
> 

To be honest, I have no idea where ftpmas...@ftp-master.debian.org got
from.  I do not remember adding it manually.

>>
>>  * I see no reason for the Release Team to be involving at this point as
>>we cannot answer this inquiry.
>>
>> However, should the FTP masters rule it to be a license incompatibility,
>> please do not hesitate to bump the severity to RC.
> 
> Could someone prod the FTP masters to analyze the issue and provide an
> authoritative statement?
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> 

It seems to me that you just did?

Thanks,
~Niels





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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Francesco Poli]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016 15:34:44 + Niels Thykier wrote:

> Francesco Poli:
> > On Sat, 2 May 2015 18:34:31 +0200 Francesco Poli wrote:
> > 
> >> [...]
> > 
> > 
> > Dear Release Team, dear FTP masters,
> > once again this issue has been left unaddressed for quite some time,
> > unfortunately.
[...]
>
> Hi,

Hello Niels,
thanks for your prompt reply.

> 
> AFAICT, the FTP masters are the authoritative source on dealing with
> license issues and they have not yet made a ruling.

Yes, and that's the problem: they seem to never answer, no matter who
and when tries to ask for a reply.

Am I writing to the right e-mail address?
I originally wrote to  (which is listed in
), but I see that you wrote
to .
Which one should I use?

> 
>  * I see no reason for the Release Team to be involving at this point as
>we cannot answer this inquiry.
> 
> However, should the FTP masters rule it to be a license incompatibility,
> please do not hesitate to bump the severity to RC.

Could someone prod the FTP masters to analyze the issue and provide an
authoritative statement?

Thanks for your time.


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
. Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE


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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Niels Thykier]

Francesco Poli:
> On Sat, 2 May 2015 18:34:31 +0200 Francesco Poli wrote:
> 
>> [...]
> 
> 
> Dear Release Team, dear FTP masters,
> once again this issue has been left unaddressed for quite some time,
> unfortunately.
> 
> I think it should be taken care of as soon as possible, lest it slip
> through another stable release.
> 
> Please re-read (at least):
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/741196#5
> https://bugs.debian.org/741196#53
> https://bugs.debian.org/741196#96
> https://bugs.debian.org/741196#111
> 
> What do you think should be done?
> 
> Once again, looking forward to hearing back from you.
> 
> Thanks for any help you may provide in solving this issue once and for
> all.
> 
> 

Hi,

AFAICT, the FTP masters are the authoritative source on dealing with
license issues and they have not yet made a ruling.

 * I see no reason for the Release Team to be involving at this point as
   we cannot answer this inquiry.

However, should the FTP masters rule it to be a license incompatibility,
please do not hesitate to bump the severity to RC.

Thanks,
~Niels





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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Francesco Poli]

On Sat, 2 May 2015 18:34:31 +0200 Francesco Poli wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:49:55 +0100 Niels Thykier wrote:
> 
> > Hi FTP masters,
> > 
> > We have been prodded about the severity of #741196
> [ the prod is https://bugs.debian.org/741196#101 ]
> > However, being a license interpretation issue, we would like to
> > defer the judgement to you on this one (suggested in comment #39).
> >   You may find the mail from Russ Allbery at [1] relevant for narrowing
> > down the possible issue (which is AFAICT a "choice of venue" clause).
> > 
> > If you believe this is (or might be) a grave issue, please upgrade the
> > severity at your earliest convenience and notify us.
> > 
> > Thank you,
> > ~Niels
> > 
> > [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2015/01/msg00264.html
> 
> Dear Release Team, dear FTP masters,
> just as I feared, jessie was released with this license incompatibility
> unaddressed.
> 
> 
> I believe I presented all the relevant facts to explain why there
> indeed is an incompatibility between the CeCILL-C and the GNU GPL
> licenses.
> Russ Allbery agreed that this may actually be a problem.
> 
> Yet, the package maintainers do not believe that there is an issue and
> they keep the bug severity below the RC threshold, while waiting for
> some official pronouncement from the FTP masters.
> This official statement from the FTP masters has been requested
> multiple times, but seems to never arrive.
> 
> Could you please take the time to address this issue during the stretch
> development cycle?
> 
> Looking forward to hearing back from you.
> Thanks for your time.


Dear Release Team, dear FTP masters,
once again this issue has been left unaddressed for quite some time,
unfortunately.

I think it should be taken care of as soon as possible, lest it slip
through another stable release.

Please re-read (at least):

https://bugs.debian.org/741196#5
https://bugs.debian.org/741196#53
https://bugs.debian.org/741196#96
https://bugs.debian.org/741196#111

What do you think should be done?

Once again, looking forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks for any help you may provide in solving this issue once and for
all.


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
. Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE


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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Francesco Poli]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:49:55 +0100 Niels Thykier wrote:

 Hi FTP masters,
 
 We have been prodded about the severity of #741196
[ the prod is https://bugs.debian.org/741196#101 ]
 However, being a license interpretation issue, we would like to
 defer the judgement to you on this one (suggested in comment #39).
   You may find the mail from Russ Allbery at [1] relevant for narrowing
 down the possible issue (which is AFAICT a choice of venue clause).
 
 If you believe this is (or might be) a grave issue, please upgrade the
 severity at your earliest convenience and notify us.
 
 Thank you,
 ~Niels
 
 [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2015/01/msg00264.html

Dear Release Team, dear FTP masters,
just as I feared, jessie was released with this license incompatibility
unaddressed.


I believe I presented all the relevant facts to explain why there
indeed is an incompatibility between the CeCILL-C and the GNU GPL
licenses.
Russ Allbery agreed that this may actually be a problem.

Yet, the package maintainers do not believe that there is an issue and
they keep the bug severity below the RC threshold, while waiting for
some official pronouncement from the FTP masters.
This official statement from the FTP masters has been requested
multiple times, but seems to never arrive.

Could you please take the time to address this issue during the stretch
development cycle?

Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks for your time.

Bye.


-- 
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 fsck is a four letter word...
. Francesco Poli .
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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Niels Thykier]

Hi FTP masters,

We have been prodded about the severity of #741196 (see below for the
prod).  However, being a license interpretation issue, we would like to
defer the judgement to you on this one (suggested in comment #39).
  You may find the mail from Russ Allbery at [1] relevant for narrowing
down the possible issue (which is AFAICT a choice of venue clause).

If you believe this is (or might be) a grave issue, please upgrade the
severity at your earliest convenience and notify us.

Thank you,
~Niels

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2015/01/msg00264.html

On 2015-01-07 23:50, Francesco Poli wrote:
 Dear Release Team,
 I am concerned that a license incompatibility (bug #741196 and the
 other similar bug reports against other packages) might slip through
 into the jessie release without being noticed or addressed adequately.
 
 Please read #741196 bug log, or, at least:
 
 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#5
 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#53
 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#96
 
 What do you think should be done?
 
 I am very disappointed by the lack of replies from the FTP Masters and
 by the status of this bug: it seems that nobody is addressing it in any
 way and the severity is being kept below the RC threshold (during the
 wait for an official statement that seems to never arrive).
 
 Looking forward to hear back from you.
 Thanks for your time.
 
 


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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Russ Allbery]

Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes:

 The only specific claim that Francesco has made that I was able to find
 is that the choice of venue clause in CeCILL-C makes it incompatible.
 However, CeCILL also contains a choice of venue clause, and the FSF
 state that it is GPL-compatible.  Given that they base those
 determinations on the advice of lawyers, I'm dubious of this argument.

Ah!  I'm sorry -- I missed a subtlety here.  The CeCILL license can be
explicitly converted to the GPL v2, hence shedding its choice of venue
clause.  The CeCILL-C license doesn't have an explicit conversion clause,
which is why I believe Francesco feels it is a problem.

Okay, this is actually a somewhat reasonable concern, in my opinion.  The
FSF does declare other licenses as being GPL-incompatible for having
choice of venue clauses.  See, for example:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102

I agree that this may actually be a problem.  I don't think it's a
particularly *large* problem -- historically, we've not treated choice of
venue clauses with a great deal of urgency.  This is also relying on the
assumption that a library linked with a GPL v2 library requires every
other library linked with it to be relicensble under the GPL v2, something
that I think we believe in principle, but which we have not always
enforced elsewhere in the archive.

But I was wrong to dismiss this -- the choice of venue clause is usually
something the FSF considers problematic.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/


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License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Francesco Poli]

Dear Release Team,
I am concerned that a license incompatibility (bug #741196 and the
other similar bug reports against other packages) might slip through
into the jessie release without being noticed or addressed adequately.

Please read #741196 bug log, or, at least:

https://bugs.debian.org/741196#5
https://bugs.debian.org/741196#53
https://bugs.debian.org/741196#96

What do you think should be done?

I am very disappointed by the lack of replies from the FTP Masters and
by the status of this bug: it seems that nobody is addressing it in any
way and the severity is being kept below the RC threshold (during the
wait for an official statement that seems to never arrive).

Looking forward to hear back from you.
Thanks for your time.


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 fsck is a four letter word...
. Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE


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Re: License incompatibility below RC threshold

[Russ Allbery]

Francesco Poli invernom...@paranoici.org writes:

 Dear Release Team,
 I am concerned that a license incompatibility (bug #741196 and the
 other similar bug reports against other packages) might slip through
 into the jessie release without being noticed or addressed adequately.

 Please read #741196 bug log, or, at least:

 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#5
 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#53
 https://bugs.debian.org/741196#96

For those who are curious what this is about, it's a library that links
with both libraries covered under the GNU GPL v2 or later and the CeCILL-C
v1.0 license.  Francesco believes these are incompatible licenses and has
asserted this in multiple bugs, but does not appear to have presented any
actual evidence of that.  The FSF doesn't state a position on CeCILL-C,
but explicitly says that CeCILL v2 is a GPL-compatible license [1].
Wikipedia claims that CeCILL-C is compatible with the GNU LGPL v2, which
would also make it compatible with the GNU GPL v2.  CeCILL-C is a
less-restrictive version of CeCILL, so it would make sense for it to be
compatible.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CeCILL

The only specific claim that Francesco has made that I was able to find is
that the choice of venue clause in CeCILL-C makes it incompatible.
However, CeCILL also contains a choice of venue clause, and the FSF state
that it is GPL-compatible.  Given that they base those determinations on
the advice of lawyers, I'm dubious of this argument.

 What do you think should be done?

Nothing, in the absence of more credible evidence that there is a license
incomaptibility.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/


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