[Pkg-doc-linux-devel] Bug#439403: Bug#439403: doc-linux: Consider removing debian/copyrights/non-free/OSL-1.1 file

[Frank Lichtenheld]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2007 at 02:29:36PM -0600, dann frazier wrote:
> The company I work for ships a subset of the Debian distribution.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Most letters ever used to say "HP" ? ;)

> We have an internal tool that does some automated license footprinting
> and raises a flag whenever it finds evidence of a license that our legal
> guys find problematic.
> 
> One of these licenses is OSL-1.1
> 
> Everytime they examine our Debian subset, they raise the same flag about
> doc-linux, because it finds debian/copyrights/non-free/OSL-1.1. Of course
> its obvious based on the hierarchy that this is a known non-free license,
> and obvious from poking around the package that the files under this license
> have been removed.
[...]
> Of course, I know this requires a new orig.tar.gz, etc, and you probably
> have reasons for wanting to keep it around anyway, so feel free to just
> close this bug. But I figure there's no harm in asking :)

Hmm.

Con:
 - Keeping the whole debian/copyrights/ hierarchy in the .orig.tar.gz
   would make it easier for third-persons to prepare new upstream
   versions without needing to access the SVN repository.
   
Pro:
 - On the other hand the SVN repo is on alioth, read-only access is available to
   everyone and new-upstream NMUs are unlikely anyway (and I would happily
   give out access to SVN anyway if only someone would want it ;)
 - Also one could argue that since most license texts themself are non-free
   we should only ship them if we really need to (i.e. if we actually ship
   content licensed under it).

I'm undecided (which of course works in favour of the status quo for
now). But I will at least keep the bug open so that other might try to
convince me that you are right ;)

Gruesse,
-- 
Frank Lichtenheld <djpig at debian.org>
www: http://www.djpig.de/