[Pkg-doc-linux-devel] Re: LDP "non-free" documents

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 01:55:48PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org):
> > While most of this is correct, the parenthesised sentence at the end is
> > at best highly misleading, and explaining how will probably clarify
> > matters. Packagers do make initial decisions themselves while creating
> > packages, but they can be overridden before they even become the package
> > maintainer (i.e. before their package enters the archive), and in
> > addition they can be overridden at a later date.
> 
> I have stated that, myself, on quite a number of occasions on LDP's
> "discuss" mailing list.  I trust and hope that nobody was actually
> mislead into thinking that nobody ever NMUs or otherwise alters a
> developer's uploaded package -- having stated the reverse many times.

I wasn't referring to NMUs at all (although those happen too, of
course). The simple fact is that authority to make licensing decisions
in Debian does not devolve to package maintainers, or non-maintainer
uploaders, or anyone else uploading packages, but to the archive
administrators as delegates of the DPL. Package maintainers do the
implementation, but that's all.

> There _were_, after all, other posts in that and other related
> discussions.

True. I confess that I didn't have time to read through them all. The
comment I replied to was just a convenient hook from which to start.

> > The archive maintainers (commonly "ftpmasters") generally take into
> > account discussions on the debian-legal mailing list while making these
> > determinations. Thus, while it's true that any given discussion on
> > debian-legal is just that of a random collection of people, conclusions
> > reached by wide consensus on debian-legal (as opposed to merely
> > consensus of the loud) have considerable force in practice.
> 
> The specific mechanism of that "considerable force" is _advisory_, yes?
> Which is what I said.

Yup. Wasn't disagreeing with you on that front, just placing slightly
different emphasis. (I've disagreed with debian-legal "consensus" myself
plenty of times in the past ...)

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]