Was Re: KDE not in Debian?
On Sat, Jan 29, 2000 at 12:01:32AM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> Now, if you truly mean what you said below -- namely
>
> Debian doesn't have millions of IPO dollars to finance a legal fight.
> And our actions can affect our distributors as well. Therefore, we
> have to be careful.
>
> -- then this uncertainty should stop Debian from distributing mixed BSD/GPL code as
> well.
Ahem..
The most ironic thing about this whole KDE/Debian Qt/GPL licensing thing
is the underlying motives.
Debian tries to maintain a good relationship with the upstream authors.
We ask for permission to distribute code, and if it's clearly granted,
and we have a maintainer who wants to maintain the code we distribute it.
If we don't have clear permission, then good taste demands that we don't
distribute it.
Most of the time this has worked rather well for us. But, somehow,
people are >>offended<< that Debian isn't distributing KDE.
I guess the primary problem is that there are authors of KDE software
who very clearly have not granted permission to distribute while there
are other authors who very clearly have.
That's isn't really a legal issue. There is a legal issue, but:
Debian is not obligated to distribute KDE.
As always, it looks like progress is being made towards where Debian
might be able to distribute KDE.
Personally, I think that we should be distributing KDE as long as we have
(1) users who want it
(2) a maintainer who is interested in supporting it, and
(3) real permission to distribute from the authors.
At the moment, 2 and 3 both look like problems.
--
Raul
Reply to: