[Debtags-devel] New categorization proposal

[Enrico Zini]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 09:40:39PM +0100, Václav Jůza wrote:

> > Right now, it looks a bit overwhelming to me, but that's more because of
> > the bewildering nature of (non-free) software licensing.
> I formerly thought about less categories (no no-*), but when I was giving
> tags to the example packages, I decided, that there is far different, when
> package can be distributed, but only free of charge, and when the package
> can not be redistributable at all.

> > Do you care for asking our lawyers at debian-legal about it?
> I have not asked them yet. Actually I don't know, what to ask them exactly 
> about. Simply, what they think about it?

I've tried contacting them in the past[1] and unfortunately what came
out was lots of nitpicking but little help towards getting anything
done.
[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debtags-devel/2005-June/000414.html

It should be tried again (also, this time the issue is different), but
when writing them I think it should be more of an "help us in getting
this done" rather than a "tell us what you think".


As of the proposed tags, they seem to be calling for more grouping.
Let me try to rework it a bit:

Facet: restricted
Tag: restricted::bin:use
Tag: restricted::bin:dist
Tag: restricted::bin:change (included for simmetry, maybe meaningless)
Tag: restricted::src:use (or study)
Tag: restricted::src:dist
Tag: restricted::src:change
Tag: restricted::deps:run
Tag: restricted::deps:build

It looks a bit more elegant to me, and it seems to be better able to
distinguish restrictions like pine (can't redistribute binary, can
redistribute source).  It also doesn't try to describe more in detail
what is the sort of restriction, which would probably be impossible
giving the crazy draconian things people write in licenses sometimes.

Actually, 'elegant' doesn't sound right for something as stinky as
software restrictions ;) but that isn't indeed your fault and I really
appreciate your efforts in sorting this out.


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico at debian.org>
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