Things we agree on about the GPL

2005-05-23 Thread Michael K. Edwards
I thought I'd take a different tack for a minute and write about
things that Raul and I (and other current debian-legal participants)
seem to agree on about the GPL, and seem to think (though most of us
are not lawyers) are well founded in law.

1.  GPL release is not release into the public domain.  There is
appellate precedent for this in the US and civil court precedent in
Germany.  Copyright in works offered under the GPL is retained by the
author, his or her employer, or an assignee, and ultimately it is this
retention of copyright that gives GPL enforcement efforts their teeth.

2.  GPL release on the Internet, if done under legitimate authority in
the first place, is hard to undo.  Caveat: there is not really very
strong language in the GPL to indicate a perpetual term, and there
are jurisdictions where a contract with no explicit term may be
terminated at will.  However, it's going to be relatively hard for a
copyright holder to claim that they did voluntarily license works
under the GPL, and did seek their wide distribution via the Internet,
but did not intend to create a basis for reliance on a perpetual term
for the license to copy and to create derivative works.

3.  There is a large category of derivative works that the GPL
legitimately offers license to create and distribute, solely on the
conditions of source code release discussed in Section 3; we generally
agree that the Debian-packaged version of a given GPL work is such a
derivative work.  There is also a large category of collections
containing GPL works, authorized by the mere aggregation clause or
otherwise, which are not obliged to be offered exclusively under the
GPL; we generally agree that distro CDs are in this category.  When
such a collection is offered, the GPL obligation to offer source has
full force with respect to the individual GPLed components.

4.  There are some moral rights of the author that are more or less
universally recognized (such as the right to truthful attribution) and
others that apply in some jurisdictions but not others.  Wherever
these rights exist, they are reserved to the author (not the copyright
holder) and cannot be contracted away.  They are, in a sense, outside
the copyright calculus, and may provide an independent mechanism for
obtaining redress for some abuses.  Applying them to software is,
however, a bit of a stretch, both in the EU and in the US (where they
are in any case technically recognized but only quasi-implemented; see
http://aic.stanford.edu/jaic/articles/jaic36-02-006_3.html ).

5.  There is some cause for long-term worry about termination of
license by a primary author's heirs under US copyright law.  I worry
about this less than some others seem to, since as I read it (for
example) the only person who could obtain a valid registration of
copyright on the Linux kernel in the US is Linus Torvalds; see
Aalmuhammed v. Lee (
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9955224.html ) for why. 
Note that this is not necessarily inconsistent with Harald Welte's
success in obtaining copyright registration in Germany for the
netfilter subsystem and prosecuting it successfully, as civil law
countries seem to handle joint works differently, and in any case
the validity of his copyright was probably not contested on degree of
authorship grounds by the defendants.

I hope this will help avoid misunderstandings such as MKE says that
A+B+C is an uncopyrightable collection!  Does that mean he thinks
copyright on A, B, and C is voided by combining them?  Would someone
care to contribute the next few points of agreement?

Cheers,
- Michael



Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

2005-05-23 Thread Brett Parker
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Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 QPL requirement: if you pass on binaries, you must pass on source to 
 both the recipient and upstream. You claim this is a fee.

Well, this is non-free as upstream may have died, and if you can't
distribute without distributing to upstream, it makes forking
impractical too. If upstream is dead then you're fully knackered though.

 GPL requirement: if you pass on binaries, you must pass on source to the 
 recipient. You claim this is not a fee.

Well, the recipient can't be dead, otherwise they wouldn't be a
recipient :)

 I entirely fail to understand the difference here. In both cases I have 
 had to pass something of value on to people I might not have wanted to 
 pass it on to.

If you don't want to pass it on, don't put it under a Free Software
licence *grin*. (Or use the BSD style licences).

- -- 
Brett Parker
web:   http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

2005-05-23 Thread Matthew Garrett
Brett Parker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1
 
 Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 QPL requirement: if you pass on binaries, you must pass on source to 
 both the recipient and upstream. You claim this is a fee.
 
 Well, this is non-free as upstream may have died, and if you can't
 distribute without distributing to upstream, it makes forking
 impractical too. If upstream is dead then you're fully knackered though.

The clause in question is:

If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial
developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must
supply one.

If upstream is dead, it's a bit difficult for them to request a copy.
--
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

2005-05-23 Thread Andrew Suffield
On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:23:57AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
 Brett Parker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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  Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  QPL requirement: if you pass on binaries, you must pass on source to 
  both the recipient and upstream. You claim this is a fee.
  
  Well, this is non-free as upstream may have died, and if you can't
  distribute without distributing to upstream, it makes forking
  impractical too. If upstream is dead then you're fully knackered though.
 
 The clause in question is:
 
 If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial
 developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must
 supply one.
 
 If upstream is dead, it's a bit difficult for them to request a copy.

Consider the case where 'upstream' refers to several hundred distinct
entities. It's the BSD advertising clause disaster all over again...

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Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

2005-05-23 Thread Matthew Garrett
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Consider the case where 'upstream' refers to several hundred distinct
 entities. It's the BSD advertising clause disaster all over again...

I don't think anyone is claiming that it's a good license.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?

2005-05-23 Thread Raul Miller
On 5/23/05, Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 at the time that I picked Perl and 1-2-3 as examples.  But perhaps we
 should regroup and identify the things we agree on (see separate
 thread) and the extent to which other gaps have narrowed.

I'll need to think about that some, but I think there are some obvious points
you missed.  (For example, that contract law can and will be used in 
resolving ownership issues in copyright cases.)

However, I don't really have your flair for long description.  My leanings are
more towards concise statements.

Anyways, I'll see if I can come up with some other points of
agreement.  (Many of your statements are statement I agree
with if they're phrased as possibilities rather than in 
always applicable to everything form -- that is, if they're
rephrased to assert existence rather than universality.)

   On 5/21/05, Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 That's certainly true of Lotus v. Borland.  However, if you look at
 the cases from video game space, you will see lots of other
 permutations: game developers using fair means or foul to defeat
 console makers' efforts to impose onerous contract terms (Sega v.
 Accolade and Atari v. Nintendo), emulator developers leveraging the
 availability of games authored for an existing console (Sony v.
 Connectix and Sony v. Bleem), and one publisher distributing add-ons
 for another's game (Micro Star v. FormGen).

One thing these cases share is that the alleged infringers were
not distributing the game software which was being infringed on.

If we draw an analogy between these cases and a dynamic linking
case, a parallel would be cases where the dynamically linked
library was not being distributed by the alleged infringer.

  The court didn't make a point of that here, but I think it is
  significant.  More generally, this ties back to the concept
  of thin derivative works vs thick works.  (Which I think
  is an important concept when talking about the scope of
  coverage by a copyright.)
 
 I'm unfamiliar with this concept.  What makes a derivative work
 thick or thin?

Consider Transwestern v. Multimedia

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=10thnavby=caseno=966371

   The mere fact that a work is copyrighted does not mean that every 
   element of the work may be protected. Feist , 499 U.S. at 348 . 
   Determining whether an infringement of a compilation copyright 
   has occurred is particularly difficult where less than the entire work 
   is copied, BellSouth Advertising  Publ'g Corp. v. Donnelley 
   Information Publ'g, Inc. , 999 F.2d 1436, 1438 (11th Cir. 1993) 
   (en banc), especially when a competitor can take the bulk of 
   the factual material from a preexisting compilation without 
   infringement. Id.  at 1445. The protection available for a 
   compilation is thin. 

...

   Although a compilation gains copyright protection with only 
   minimal creativity in the selection and arrangement of facts, 
   Feist 's statement that the copyright is thin has implications 
   when the holder sues an alleged infringer. It would seem to 
   follow analytically that more similarity is required when less 
   protectible matter is at issue. Thus, if substantial similarity is 
   the normal measure required to demonstrate infringement, 
   `supersubstantial' similarity must pertain when dealing with 
   `thin' works. 4 Melville B. Nimmer  David Nimmer, Nimmer 
   on Copyright , § 13.03[A] at 13-28 (1997); see  also  Apple 
   Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. , 35 F.3d 1435, 1439 (9th 
   Cir. 1994) (When the range of protectible and unauthorized 
   expression is narrow, the appropriate standard for illicit copying 
   is virtual identity.), cert.  denied , 115 S. Ct. 1176 (1995); Jane 
   C. Ginsburg, No Sweat? Copyright and Other Protection of 
   Works of Information After Feist v. Rural Telephone , 92 Colum. 
   L. Rev. 338, 349 (1992) (`Even if the compilation is deemed 
   original, what kind of copying will be held to infringe it?' The 
   answer [after Feist ] appears to be: `Virtually none, short of 
   extensive verbatim copying.'). Further, because the 
   copyrightability of a factual compilation depends upon the 
   originality in selection, coordination or arrangement of the facts 
   as a whole work, 17 U.S.C. § 101, in an infringement action 
   the court must compare the allegedly infringing work as a whole 
   also.

  The mere aggregation clause (on the same storage volume but
  not a part of the Program or a work based on the Program) seems
  to me to contain both elements of IP law and elements of technology.
 
 Let's agree that it's a subtle point, and that there's no predicting
 exactly how a district court would go about construing mere
 aggregation, let alone what conclusion it would reach.  It's not even
 clear to me whether an appeals court would go so far as to declare the
 district court's approach to construing that phrase incorrect as a
 matter of law even if it 

Male sexual enhancement formula^

2005-05-23 Thread Harriot

Wish you could be better?
http://www.terima.net/ss/
No more penis enlarge ripoffs!



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removing the debian-legal website stuff?

2005-05-23 Thread Frank Lichtenheld
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/


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Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?

2005-05-23 Thread Jens Seidel
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


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36 hours of freedom.

2005-05-23 Thread Ed

Little magic. Perfect weekends.
http://colonials.healthsolutins.info/?ImagenxtvuyPalestinianzvtspecial
We offer a fast-track repeat prescription service 




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Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?

2005-05-23 Thread Marco d'Itri
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


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Re: License question about regexplorer

2005-05-23 Thread Marco d'Itri
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Wait, the QPL (with no additional permission and a choice of venue)
is *not* DFSG-free (many long discussions were hold on debian-legal last
summer, IIRC).
This is just bullshit. A few people thinking it's not free does not make
it non-free.

-- 
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Marco


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Re: License question about regexplorer

2005-05-23 Thread Andrew Suffield
On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:04:52PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 Wait, the QPL (with no additional permission and a choice of venue)
 is *not* DFSG-free (many long discussions were hold on debian-legal last
 summer, IIRC).
 This is just bullshit. A few people thinking it's not free does not make
 it non-free.

But Marco d'Itri defending it means it probably is non-free. Funny how
that works.

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Re: Trademark license compatibility with GPL and/or DFSG

2005-05-23 Thread Nathanael Nerode
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On the other hand, any trademark license would permit us to use their
trademark, which we could not do otherwise.
This is a misunderstanding of trademark.

It is always legal to describe the driver as being a driver by author 
intended for use with trademark, because that can't cause confusion about 
the origin of the driver.  You should do this.

I think that naming the driver after the trademark might indeed be a trademark 
violation, because it might theoretically cause confusion about the origin of 
the driver.  Now, Linux drivers often have nonobvious names which don't match 
the hardware's commercial name.  So I think you should go ahead and name the 
driver with some non-trademarked name, and just describe it as intended for 
use with trademark everywhere it's mentioned.

If it was a debian package, you would unfortunately really want to have the 
trademark in the package name so that users could find the package using the 
standrd search facilities in dselect.  However, that doesn't seem to be the 
issue right now, so I won't try to work out a solution for that right now.


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Re: Trademark license compatibility with GPL and/or DFSG

2005-05-23 Thread Nathanael Nerode
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The company in question is willing to negotiate terms for a trademark
license that is agreeable to all parties.

Obviously any advertising or
guarantee restrictions are unacceptable to us.
Well, no; some such restrictions are acceptable.  We accept the required NO 
WARRANTY clauses in lots of licenses.  I think that a restriction which 
required that we note that *they* aren't guaranteeing it would be fine.

Unlimited use of the trademark is unacceptable to them.
Well, first of all we don't want or need that.  We can use the trademark in 
most of the ways we want to without hitting any trademark restrictions.  I 
don't have the case reference here, but there was a case involving TSR and 
products labelled Compatible with Dungeons and Dragons, and it was ruled 
that that was *not* a trademark violation (although TSR kept threatening 
people who did it with lawsuits for years anyway).

Basically, we can't legally use a trademark (without a license) in ways which 
may cause confusion about the origin of the product; we can use it in all 
other ways and be on safe legal ground under current law.  Putting the 
trademark in the name of the driver might lead people to think that the 
driver was from the company which owns the trademark, so that would
require a license.

How about this license:
Anyone may use the trademark trademark as part of the name of a product 
designed to work with the hardware; provided that the product using the 
trademark in its name, and any advertising for it using the trademark, 
prominently mentions that the product is not produced by or supported by the 
makers of the hardware.

Using the trademark in the name is the only thing we want which would actually 
hit trademark restrictions as far as I can tell, so that's all we need a 
license for.  Disclaimers are required by a lot of licenses and should be 
acceptable (much like NO WARRANTY requirements). With this license, the 
disclaimers are the only restriction, and this restriction applies solely to 
usage of trademarks in an otherwise-maybe-infringing manner, not to anything 
else.  Among other things, I believe this keeps it GPL-compatible, since the 
product can be distributed without agreeing to the restrictions simply by 
changing the name (which is not part of the copyright-covered material).

They want their trademarks stripped from modified
code that is essentially different in intent and purpose from the
original code.
Well, that's fine; we don't want to use their trademarks for things which 
aren't designed to work with their hardware, now do we?  (At least, except in 
a historical context, which certainly wouldn't be a trademark violation.) 

So what do you think they would say about the model trademark license I just 
proposed?  (Don't use it until debian-legal has had a few days to nitpick it, 
of course.)  I think it's a free license, although others may disagree; the 
key point is that it is not trying to do anything but prevent confusion, and 
it doesn't overreach.


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Revamping the debian-legal website (was Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?

2005-05-23 Thread Nathanael Nerode
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


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Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?

2005-05-23 Thread Raul Miller
On 5/23/05, Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On 5/23/05, Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  I'll need to think about that some, but I think there are some obvious 
  points
  you missed.  (For example, that contract law can and will be used in
  resolving ownership issues in copyright cases.)

 As long as you modify copyright cases to claims of license under
 copyright, I'm good with that.  Contract law is not used to resolve
 any issue other than the validity and scope of a claimed license.
 License as in non-exclusive copyright license, a term in a contract,
 not any statutory or judicially created defense such as fair use or
 doctrine of merger.

Ok.  Except, last sentence no verb.
 
  Anyways, I'll see if I can come up with some other points of
  agreement.  (Many of your statements are statement I agree
  with if they're phrased as possibilities rather than in
  always applicable to everything form -- that is, if they're
  rephrased to assert existence rather than universality.)
 
 OK.  But let's both be careful about mistaking, say, some copyright
 licenses are terms in contracts as nearly agreement with all
 copyright licenses are terms in contracts; the former (in law, not in
 math) implicitly suggests that some copyright licenses are not terms
 in contracts, which is diametrically opposed to the latter.

To my knowledge all (or perhaps almost all -- I'm not enough of an
expert to say which) U.S. case law involving copyright claims have
dealt with contractual issues.

Note that I haven't take time to wade back through what we've written
over the last few weeks, looking for points we now agree on.  It's a
daunting tsk.

   That's certainly true of Lotus v. Borland.  However, if you look at
   the cases from video game space, you will see lots of other
   permutations: game developers using fair means or foul to defeat
   console makers' efforts to impose onerous contract terms (Sega v.
   Accolade and Atari v. Nintendo), emulator developers leveraging the
   availability of games authored for an existing console (Sony v.
   Connectix and Sony v. Bleem), and one publisher distributing add-ons
   for another's game (Micro Star v. FormGen).
 
  One thing these cases share is that the alleged infringers were
  not distributing the game software which was being infringed on.
 
 I don't believe that makes any difference to the logic in these cases.
  There would be no additional cause of action in, say, Sony v.
 Connectix if Connectix had legitimately purchased Sony games for
 resale and bundled them with its PlayStation emulator.  Not as long as
 it did not claim collective work copyright on the bundle (compare
 Palladium Music v. EatSleepMusic) or violate trademark law by implying
 that the emulator was a Sony-approved product.

I was not referring to distribution of cloned software but distribution
of the original software.  If Connectix was distributing Sony software,
that issue (along with any associated contracts) would have been
very significant to the case.

  If we draw an analogy between these cases and a dynamic linking
  case, a parallel would be cases where the dynamically linked
  library was not being distributed by the alleged infringer.
 
 That simply doesn't make a bit of difference to whether a program is a
 derivative work of the library to which it's linked -- and all of the
 cases cited above are copyright (and/or trademark) infringement cases,
 not breach of contract.  Now, if the library's license agreement
 contained a prohibition on distributing the two things together, then
 the court might have to consider whether that prohibition is a
 legitimate term for a contract to contain.  But in the case of the
 GPL, I do not believe (IANAL) that it contains such a prohibition when
 construed according to the applicable principles of common law
 (irrespective of the details of the given jurisdiction's
 implementation of contract law).  Participants from civil law
 countries appear to reach similar conclusions.

The GPL certainly allows distribution when the source code for
the program as a whole is available under an appropriate license. 
One of the things we're discussing in the context of Quagga is whether
the source code for the program as a whole is available under
an appropriate license.  [We're also trying to nail down the
why or why not issues.]

 [snip citations anchored in Feist]
 
 You do understand that Transwestern v. Multimedia, BellSouth v.
 Donnelley, and Feist v. Rural Telephone are discussing the thin
 copyright on compilations of facts (such as telephone directories)?
 Copyright on a collective work (a compilation whose components are
 themselves copyrightable works) is in some ways stronger, but it still
 has to meet a non-zero threshold of creative expression in selection
 and arrangement, and the act of combining the compiled binaries of
 Quagga, libsnmp5, and libssl doesn't cut it.  The modifications to
 Quagga to support publishing routing tables 

Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?

2005-05-23 Thread MJ Ray
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