Re: infos about alien licenses
On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 07:45:46AM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote: I don't think that the clause is necessarily a problem, though -- it reads to me more like a slightly more emphatic no-warranty clause, rather than a prohibition against use in any particular field. So what should I do in this case? Contact the upstream and ask him/her to change that license? Or do we accept this? I'll leave that open to discussion here for the moment. Since there hasn't been any dissenting opinion expressed, I'd say that there's no massive objection to the clause as it stands. My advice would be to put in a quiet query to upstream asking if they really think that the extra bit is really needed, since there's a perfectly good warranty disclaimer already, and whether they meant for the clause to be binding or merely advisory. In the meantime, get the packaging sorted out (both the app itself and the dependencies). My guess is that upstream probably boilerplated the template from somewhere, or thought it was a good idea at the time(tm), and will be happy to clarify their intent. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: infos about alien licenses
This one time, at band camp, Matthew Palmer said: On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 02:35:28PM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote: THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ANY SITUATION ENDANGERING HUMAN LIFE OR PROPERTY. This is possibly problematic, depending on how you define should. I'd take it as just being a restatement of the whole no warranty, if it breaks you get to keep both pieces thing, but it could be read as forbidding use in the mentioned areas. The word 'should' has a fairly straight forward meaning in the English language. This does not present a problem, as far as I can see. It is substantively no different from the standard: Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. It is a disclaimer telling you they take no responsibility if you use it in a situation that endagers human life or property. No problem. -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: infos about alien licenses
Stephen Gran wrote: This one time, at band camp, Matthew Palmer said: On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 02:35:28PM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote: THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ANY SITUATION ENDANGERING HUMAN LIFE OR PROPERTY. This is possibly problematic, depending on how you define should. I'd take it as just being a restatement of the whole no warranty, if it breaks you get to keep both pieces thing, but it could be read as forbidding use in the mentioned areas. The word 'should' has a fairly straight forward meaning in the English language. This does not present a problem, as far as I can see. It is substantively no different from the standard: Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. It is a disclaimer telling you they take no responsibility if you use it in a situation that endagers human life or property. No problem. Sounds good to me. Thanks for the clarification. cheers, wjl aka Wolfgang Lonien -- Key ID 0x728D9BD0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net Key Fingerprint = A923 2294 B7ED EB3E 2F18 AE56 AAB8 D36A 728D 9BD0 uid Wolfgang Lonien (wjl) like: [EMAIL PROTECTED] We prefer encrypted, text-only email messages here. Thank you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: infos about alien licenses
This one time, at band camp, Matthew Palmer said: On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 11:25:54AM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote: This one time, at band camp, Matthew Palmer said: On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 02:35:28PM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote: THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ANY SITUATION ENDANGERING HUMAN LIFE OR PROPERTY. This is possibly problematic, depending on how you define should. I'd take it as just being a restatement of the whole no warranty, if it breaks you get to keep both pieces thing, but it could be read as forbidding use in the mentioned areas. The word 'should' has a fairly straight forward meaning in the English language. I just had a look at 'dict should' and it was a bit more complicated than you make out. There's also the legal English alternative -- there's plenty of words that have different interpretation in legal documents than they do in colloquial usage. Should in legal English has much the same use and meaning as it does in the RFC's - it means roughly 'it would be good if ...' but does not mean 'we require ...'. I understand that you came to the same conclusion, but I wanted to be clear here. Take care, -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: PHP license...
On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 16:59:36 -0400 Charles Fry wrote: As you may have read in the thread you're referring to (I don't know which of them, as there are quite several), I don't agree. I believe that PHP license version 3.01 does not comply with the DFSG, even when applied to PHP itself or to PHP Group software. The problematic clause is #4. Moreover, when the license is applied to anything else (that is to say, software not provided by the PHP Group), a bunch of additional issues appear. Unfortunately, it seems that really few people here are able to see what I perceive as a clear non-freeness. As previously mentioned on the list, there are and have been other packages in Debian with similar clauses. This is not an argument. Previous errors should not be taken as a justification for their reiteration. Just try and imagine the following BTS interaction between a user and the maintainer of package foo: James R. User there's a buffer overflow vulnerability in foo John F. Maintainer there are and have been other packages in Debian with similar vulnerabilities, so that must be OK, tag wontfix Moreover the result of the discussions seems to be that several bugs were *closed*, while the license is still unfixed... :-((( If you want to have a severe bug on this licensing issue, I invite you to open it with PHP itself. Filing a serious bug against package php[345] is unlikely to produce significant results, unless I can convince other debian-legal regulars that there actually is a problem. If I filed a bug report now, the php package maintainer would probably come to debian-legal to check whether my claims are backed by some consensus on the list and/or review previous discussions about the topic: he would probably close the bug. Consequently, I think that I must first gain consensus on the list and *only then* file a serious bug against php[345] and hope the issue can be fixed by upstream. Remember that PHP License has an auto-upgrade clause, so if the PHP Group fixes the license (with a new version, say 3.02 or 4.0) every package that is affected by this issue would instantly become DFSG-free. Fix once, Free everywhere! As long as PHP is allowed to remain ininhibited in Debian, there is no arguement for removing other PHP Group software that uses the same license. As I repeatedly stated, the issue I'm pointing out holds for both PHP itself and other PHP Group software. I'm not trying to claim that PHP is OK, while other PHP Group software is not. -- :-( 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 pgpH9y55lXOkr.pgp Description: PGP signature
