Debian DPL Threatens to Leave SPI Over Sun Java

An anonymous reader writes "A three-week-long flame war in debian-devel over the new Java Distribution License has culminated in Anthony Towns, the newly elected Debian Project Lead, offering to separate Debian from its legal representative, SPI. This came as a response to SPI member John Goerzen's objections to the Debian project's interaction with Sun's legal team around the new JDL license without review from SPI's lawyers."

Comments

Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why my wife left me!

Re:Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why my wife left me!

She probably left you for a well-hung guy named Ubuntu, am I right?

Re:Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why my wife left me!

I found her: here

Re:Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Ubuntu loves, Ubuntu chops!

Re:Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go Ubuntu, you never go back.

Re:Weird Coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

no class. end of story.

A lot of nerve

[stymyx]

If SPI is Debian's legal representative, it is perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be consulted about potentially problematic legal actions taken by Debian, let alone to simply be informed when such actions take place.

SPI wasn't trying to take the place of Debian's "governing body", it was simply trying to act as their legal representative.

Re:A lot of nerve

[NormalVisual]

That's what it looked like to me also. Towns is getting worked up about a perceived control issue from SPI, but if SPI is the one that is going have to foot the bill for defending Debian's actions, it's quite understandable for them to be concerned about the licensing issues brought about by including a package in a distribution.

From the thread: "...if SPI are not willing to endorse the standard methods by which Debian operates -- having the archive administrators review licenses of new packages -- and the standard methods by which Debian reviews decisions -- public discussion with the original decision makers empowered to change their minds, and overview by the technical committee and the developers as a whole by general resolution, then we need to change Debian's relationship with SPI so that is not an issue."

This sounds to me like a fairly dangerous way to operate, unless the archive admins or others in the chain are qualified attorneys, and if Debian is effectively committing SPI to questionable legal obligations without consulting with them first, then SPI would be fools for not trying to get a handle on that. Resolving things technically is one thing, but playing fast and loose with licensing is a good way to find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. Towns is coming off looking like a petulant child, IMHO.

Re:A lot of nerve

[joostje]

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

The discussion here is about including non-free software in the non-free archive. This is done on a regular basis by the Debian ftp-masters team, and each time they themselves read the lisence, judge it, and decide whether it can be allowed into the non-free archive.

So the adding of the java packages to non-free looked just like a routine job, that ftp-masters handed the way they do with all non-free software. This time they even took more precausions, and asked the sun team if inclusion in the debian non-free archive was OK. And it seems that that is when the discussions on debian-flamware started.

Re:A lot of nerve

[metacosm]

As a "legal representative" -- you serve your client. While SPI may have preferred to be in the loop sooner, they can't "expect" or "demand" it. They are supposed to assist Debian. If Debian (as a body) chooses not to seek assistance / advice -- so be it!

The intelligence of the decision made by the Project Lead (Anthony Towns) is debatable. His control should not be -- and I think the primary point of his response was to clear up any "confusion" about SPI's power/control. When you are forced to have constant interaction with a group of lawyers *shiver*, I think a hard slap in the face is often needed to stop them from naturally trying to move more and more decision into the "legal domain" where they can apply pressure/control.

Honestly, this doesn't seem terribly dramatic to me, it just a gentle reminder to people that he is the decision maker, and SPI is replaceable. Hopefully, SPI will work in a more supportive, as compared to combative roll in the future, as they should be.

Re:A lot of nerve

[KiloByte]

Check out this post. If it doesn't deserve to be put in Wikipedia as an example in the "ad hominem" article, I don't know what does.

The whole flamewar is quite one-sided: there is only a few people who support Java in non-free, and the whole rest opposes them. Too bad, the proponents are the DPL and more than one FTPmaster.

The current Java license is obviously unacceptable; the FAQ is ok. Too bad, the FAQ explicitely says that it doesn't bear any legal relevance, and, even worse, the license explicitely says that it can't be overridden by things like that FAQ. Thus, I'm afraid that Anthony Towns' argument that says "the FAQ makes the license fine" doesn't stand.

Fortunately, it appears that, albeit slowly, Sun actually exhibits a sliver of good will. Let's hope they'll change the license soon.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Raphael]

The current Java license is obviously unacceptable;

Is it? The main problem seems to be the indemnification clause. But Java is not the only package in the standard archive or in non-free that has such a clause. And it appears that nobody complained about these other packages.

Here is a quote from another message from the Anthony Towns (DPL) in that thread:

From the xorg-x11 copyright file:

] 11. Indemnity. Recipient shall be solely responsible for damages arising,
] directly or indirectly, out of its utilization of rights under this License.
] Recipient will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Silicon Graphics, Inc.
] from and against any loss, liability, damages, costs or expenses (including
] the payment of reasonable attorneys fees) arising out of Recipient's use,
] modification, reproduction and distribution of the Subject Software or out of
] any representation or warranty made by Recipient.

From the openoffice.org copyright file:

] Therefore, if
] a Contributor includes the Program in a commercial product offering, such
] Contributor ("Commercial Contributor") hereby agrees to defend and indemnify
] every other Contributor ("Indemnified Contributor") against any losses, damages
] and costs (collectively "Losses") arising from claims, lawsuits and other legal
] actions brought by a third party against the Indemnified Contributor to the
] extent caused by the acts or omissions of such Commercial Contributor in
] connection with its distribution of the Program in a commercial product
] offering.

Re:A lot of nerve

[NMerriam]

As a "legal representative" -- you serve your client. While SPI may have preferred to be in the loop sooner, they can't "expect" or "demand" it. They are supposed to assist Debian. If Debian (as a body) chooses not to seek assistance / advice -- so be it!

That's somewhat akin to saying that just because an accountant works for you, he should support your embezzlement. On the contrary, an accountant has legal responsibilities that go beyond doing whatever you say, and so does legal counsel. An attorney who didn't advise their client not to take legal advice from the opposing party would be not just a bad lawyer, but possibly personally liable, and could potentially lose their license to practice law.

As you say, if Debian chooses not to be represented by the SPI, that's their choice, but until SPI is told, they have responsibilities.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

ftp-masters handed the way they do with all non-free software.

Excuse me? I'm not Debian expert but as far as I know the normal process for new packages is to issue an ITP (intent-to-package) stating among other things the license of the package and send a copy to debian-devel -- this is all documented in the developers-reference. New licenses are typically sent to debian-legal for review.

None of that happened this time. There may be good reasons for that, but stating that this case was handed just like any other sounds like a lie to me... but, like I said I'm not an expert, please enlighten me.

Re:A lot of nerve

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Now I've just read a little of TFA, but my first impression is to agree with the GP. Lawyers are a bit different than accountants. Lawyers only have a responsibility to inform people of a clients wrong-doing if they know of it before hand. This situtation seems a bit more like this (I know all analogies such but bear with me):

Say you kill someone, but you want to plead not guilty but tell your lawyer all what happended. Then your lawyer goes on Larry King and tells the world that he thinks what you did was wrong and if you would have asked him first he would have told you not to kill anyone.

I think I'd be looking for a new lawyer and my previous laywer should be dis-bared. Again, I've just skimmed a few posting so maybe I'm missing something.

Re:A lot of nerve

[dnoyeb]

Funny. I had this same argument over the eclipse license. The license makes things unclear. Which normally is not unacceptable for a legal document. Yet compared with the GPL and LGPL that make things clear, it then makes the EPL clear that things omitted are NOT included.

The argument against mine was that the FAQ clarified this, which I found laughable. Seems like Sun is not the only one trying to pull this stunt.

My main problem is that a vague license means the entity with the best lawyers has a huge advantage. So big companies like Sun or IBM couldn't care less. I don't think its a coincidence that the GPL/LGPL are much less vague given their objective and who they are intended to protect.

Re:A lot of nerve

[joostje]

Excuse me? I'm not Debian expert but as far as I know the normal process for new packages is to issue an ITP (intent-to-package) stating among other things the license of the package and send a copy to debian-devel -- this is all documented in the developers-reference. New licenses are typically sent to debian-legal for review.

You are absolutely right, for packages in main. I'm not sure about packages outside main (those in non-free). However, as you notice, none of the above includes asking SPI for permission, so even if licenses of non-free packages need to be sent to debian-legal etc, that still wouldn't have been a need to consult SPI.

It may well be that errors have been made, I just don't see how SPI can be so offended about being sidelined, when there wasn't a need to consult SPI anyway.

Re:A lot of nerve

[muellerr1]

And it seems that that is when the discussions on debian-flamware started

flamware (flâm'wâr) adj. 1. Copyrighted software that is available free of charge with the condition that users harshly criticize each other and their respective mothers.

Re:A lot of nerve

[takeaslash]

I am not justifying the legal language used, but most legal documents use this type of language. It is not uncommon that the average punter has trouble understand it. It is always written to cover their asses, rather than yours. Dont blame Sun or IBM. Blame 100's of years of legal process.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Svartalf]

It's because they consulted with Sun's lawyers instead on this that there's an issue.

Re:A lot of nerve

[makomk]

You are absolutely right, for packages in main. I'm not sure about packages outside main (those in non-free). However, as you notice, none of the above includes asking SPI for permission, so even if licenses of non-free packages need to be sent to debian-legal etc, that still wouldn't have been a need to consult SPI. It may well be that errors have been made, I just don't see how SPI can be so offended about being sidelined, when there wasn't a need to consult SPI anyway.

Of course, it seems that the first that debian-legal heard about this was when someone noticed the package had gone into non-free - and they weren't happy about it at all.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack ass.

Re:A lot of nerve

[DragonWriter]

Not all indemnification clauses are the same; the two you posted are, for instance, very different from each other.

That's why you have legal representatives; to understand the details and make sure you aren't getting tied up by what might seem innocuous if you don't analyze it more carefully than to have a general understanding of a heading like "indemnification clause".

Re:A lot of nerve

[DragonWriter]

Its fairly common for lawyers -- even ones getting paid -- to split with clients because their clients persist in not taking the lawyers' advice and doing things they were advised not to.

This isn't about reporting criminal wrongdoing at all, so that's not an issue. Its about whether a particular client and their legal representative can effectively work together, and, if the client is doing deals consulting the other sides lawyers and not their own, and can't be convinced that's not the right way to do business, well, its pretty easy to see there is a fundamental problem there.

Re:A lot of nerve

[wild_berry]

Sir, I am not a lawyer, do not play one on television, am not related to one and nor have I shared a sofa, bed, vehicle, stargate or IRC channel (to my knowledge) with one. But your post makes things unclear:

The license makes things unclear. Which normally is not unacceptable for a legal document.

The double negative in the second sentence confuses the sense of the rest of the paragraph. How much time do you spend using Eclipse? :P

Re:A lot of nerve

[samkass]

The current Java license is obviously unacceptable

If it were obvious there wouldn't be a debate. This whole thing appears to be another example of the open source's constant struggle between the happiness of the developers vs. the happiness of the users. With Debian, the users seem to be winning.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the 'ad hominem' remark, and it appears that several people on the mailing list did too. Reading the replies to that post made me feel better about humanity.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Intron]

For reference, here's the Sun indemnity clause.

B. License to Distribute Software. ... (vi) you agree to defend and indemnify Sun and its licensors from and against any damages, costs, liabilities, settlement amounts and/or expenses (including attorneys' fees) incurred in connection with any claim, lawsuit or action by any third party that arises or results from the use or distribution of any and all Programs and/or Software.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Bob9113]

If SPI is Debian's legal representative, it is perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be consulted about potentially problematic legal actions taken by Debian, let alone to simply be informed when such actions take place.

SPI wasn't trying to take the place of Debian's "governing body", it was simply trying to act as their legal representative.

I concur - and I think the right thing to do now is to relax. Take a step back and take a deep breath. Then ask, "Does the SPI help Debian? Is SPI benefitted by it's association with Debian?" I think the answer to both questions is yes.

So the next step is to recognize that this is something that happened in the past. It's over now. Learn from it. Come up with some guidelines for how to act in the future. Talk about the roles that each partner ought to play and the authority that each partner should have.

Don't get distracted with "You should not have done this." That is accusatory. The DPL didn't do it to piss off SPI, nor because he doesn't have respect for SPI. He did it because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And that was a reasonable judgement call for him to make at the time and in context. How do I know that? Because he's not stupid and I sincerely doubt he's a dick.

So SPI would like to provide further explanation of, or expand, its role for Debian. OK, cool. So do that now. Figure out what the guidelines will be going forward. Learn from it and move on.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Blakey Rat]

Do you think it has something to do with them consulting Sun lawyers and not their own? An intensely stupid move, no matter what the organization is?

You *always* talk to your own lawyers before talking to the other guy's... your asking to be rammed up the ass (legally speaking) otherwise. If a conflict does arise, talking to their lawyers first weakens your case tremendously. The legal firm is probably:

1) Offended that they (apparently) weren't trusted to evaluate this license, but Sun's lawyers were

2) Upset because now, if there IS a conflict, building a case will be much more work for them, and there's a good chance they might lose it, thus sullying their reputation.

The fault is with whatever Debian admin consulted Sun's lawyers first, not Debian's legal firm.

Re:A lot of nerve

[sfjoe]

Towns is coming off looking like a petulant child, IMHO.

Petulant childishness? In the linux community? Who woulda thunk?

Re:A lot of nerve

[arodland]

Uh, well actually, not that I'm defending Towns in this situation, but it doesn't seem to be an attack, so much as alerting people of a potential nutjob with an axe to grind. He hasn't made any argument based on that; he's just providing information to help people draw their own conclusions :)

Re:A lot of nerve

[krmt]

There is no requirement to do an ITP. The ITP exists to prevent duplicate work, and to allow people to have some idea of what's going on. It's generally a good idea to do one, but I can think of several examples in which an ITP was never filed and no one cared. Even when one has been filed, it's not like a contract or anything, as people will sometimes usurp ITP's. Sending a license to debian-legal has never been required, as it is really only an advisory body for people who need such advice.

There were also good reasons for not doing an ITP in this case. Whether or not it should have been put in to non-free was an issue, but now that the FAQ has been clarified this doesn't seem to be a real problem for anyone.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Arker]

I don't think it's about 'asking for permission' so much as simply letting their lawyers have time to look it over and raise objections if appropriate.

Re:A lot of nerve

[Paul Jakma]

The argument against mine was that the FAQ clarified this, which I found laughable.

It's not laughable though, in english jurisprudence, because of estoppel.

Sun can not first tell you "Well, look, we think that that interpretation of the licence, which we wrote, which tries to claim ABC might not be allowed, isn't valid. That interpretation definitely is not what we intended. What we intended was XYZ, which you means it is perfectly ok for you to do ABC.", and then later sue for having done ABC.

Let's get some perspective here. Sun-jre is *not* in Debian main, it's in non-free. The clauses which people are *so* concerned with are clauses present even in licences of software in *main*. Even if we presume the concerns raised are valid, well Sun have not only stated it doesn't think the concerns raised are a problem but also barred themselves from "making use of" the problematic interpretations in doing so.

So the "problem" seems to be an emotive one, because it involves Sun and/or Java.

--paulj

(And yes, I might be very biased. ;) )

Re:A lot of nerve

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

There were also good reasons for not doing an ITP in this case. Whether or not it should have been put in to non-free was an issue, but now that the FAQ has been clarified this doesn't seem to be a real problem for anyone.

Do you mean the FAQ that, according to Sun, has no legal weight (or is there a new turn of events)?

There may have been reasons to not do an ITP, but I just checked the Debian Policy Manual: It clearly says that when there is doubt about a license debian-legal should be contacted. We know that the ftp-masters worked with Sun on the license (that's why the FAQ was written), to me that implies they had some doubts... For some reason they decided to contact Sun lawyers (which was good) and not SPI lawyers and debian-legal (which was bad).

Re:A lot of nerve

[krmt]

Do you mean the FAQ that, according to Sun, has no legal weight (or is there a new turn of events)?

New turn of events that seems to have satisfied everyone. Go check out the revised header.

There may have been reasons to not do an ITP, but I just checked the Debian Policy Manual: It clearly says that when there is doubt about a license debian-legal should be contacted. We know that the ftp-masters worked with Sun on the license (that's why the FAQ was written), to me that implies they had some doubts... For some reason they decided to contact Sun lawyers (which was good) and not SPI lawyers and debian-legal (which was bad).

debian-legal is simply there to advise the ftpmasters. If the ftpmasters feel that they can get better advice on the matter elsewhere then that's their perogative to do so. Yes, they probably should have talked to SPI's lawyer, but as I understand it the thing was motivated by Sun trying to get java distributed, so Sun came to them. Specifically, Sun representatives were physically present at Debconf, talking over the issues that the ftpmasters had. They didn't blindly go in to this.

Re:A lot of nerve

[dnoyeb]

Yea I read that again and was a bit confused. It would have been simpler to say, "normally an unclear license is somewhat acceptable."

non-free is not part of debian

[joostje]

The java packages are (if at all) only included in non-free, and that isn't part of the official debian. So yes, it may be a big fight, AFAIK the cause of the fight (the java packages in non-free) is only about an extra service Debian provides to it's users, not about debian itself.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The java packages are (if at all) only included in non-free, and that isn't part of the official debian. So yes, it may be a big fight, AFAIK the cause of the fight (the java packages in non-free) is only about an extra service Debian provides to it's users, not about debian itself.

Picking a nit I know, but:

1) The fight is caused by the potential movement of java from non-free to free.

2) Java was in debian - non-free is part of debian, just not supported or on the CDs :-)

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[joostje]

1) The fight is caused by the potential movement of java from non-free to free.

I think you are wrong here. Could you provide a link to a message where anyone is discussiong moving java from non-free to free in debian? All discussion I read was about including java in non-free at all.

2) Java was in debian - non-free is part of debian, just not supported or on the CDs :-)

No, read the social contract:

We have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our archive for these works. The packages in these areas are not part of the Debian system, although they have been configured for use with Debian.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I think you are wrong here. Could you provide a link to a message where anyone is discussiong moving java from non-free to free in debian? All discussion I read was about including java in non-free at all.

Erg, you're completely right - I thought it was - I don't use Java, so hadn't really noticed!

No, read the social contract:

Yeah, I know what the social contract says, but semantic games about "debian" vs "debian system" aside, I think if I can download a .deb package of software from a debian server then I was say its 'part of debian'.

Any mods reading this, feel free to bomb my (incorrect) GP statement into the ground!

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[andersa]

JAVA is NOT in Debian and never has been!!!

I have been a steady debian user for several years, and is using both main, contrib, and non-free.

There is no way to aptitude install sun-java. Yuo have to build a package yourself. Since scripts are provided that largely automate this, this is fairly simple task. But you can't just get java from a Debian server and install it like any other package.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

1) The fight is caused by the potential movement of java from non-free to free.

I was incorrect - please stop modding up. Java was not in non-free.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[ajs318]

The only thing that will move Java from "non-free" to "free" is the release of Java source code under a DFSG-compliant licence. Although that is slated to happen sometime in the future, I'm not holding my breath.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[ThePhilips]

I have read once BlackDown.org's license. The license is flat out prohibit redistribution. End of Story.

From the mail lists, my impression (developers refused to discuss directly the contract with Sun under which they do port Java to Linux - they seem to be under NDA) was that most of the restrictions came from Sun, not from BlackDown people. Debian cannot give you BlackDown's port of Java, you have to go to BlackDown.org to get it: that's part of license.

And now it seems that Sun's JRE/JDK license has the same problem: it prohibit redistribution. Or as I have understood from the discussion, it attach conditions to redictribution, making Debian (and consequently SPI) legally liable for potential damages. Getting Sun's JDK from Debian and getting Sun's JDK from Sun are two _legally_ different things. As long as restrictions there, no way (even in non-free) such package can appear. Sun's people reacted and said they will fix the problem with license. We just need to wait couple of weeks to see what will come out of that.

P.S. Try to imaging your position as Debian Project Leader (DPL). You have responsibilities. In fact you are responsible for all decisions made during the time you are in power. Someone (behind your back) includes package with long list of restriction into the Debian. And then company whose work got included sues SPI for damages from illegal distribution of the software package. SPI would of course blame responsible - not the guy uploaded the package - but project leader, DPL. The Debian policies exist to avoid such situations - to avoid needless legal risks. You just can't ignore them, because you potentially jeopardize others.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[joostje]

Yeah, I know what the social contract says, but semantic games about "debian" vs "debian system" aside, I think if I can download a .deb package of software from a debian server then I was say its 'part of debian'.

Yes, I know that's what (some/many) people think. And that's why I wanted to stress that non-free isn't really part of Debian.

Also, try an architecture other than i386, and suddenly non-free shrinks a lot, while the 'real' debian just stays what it is on i386. Then you'll see what is really part of Debian, and what isn't.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[Pecisk]

Yes, you are right on target, but it is more than that. I see it is a fight against "evil Sun binaries". Not to troll or blame either side, I can say I understand them both, It is very clearly to see that Debian-legal has big no-no opinion to bind Debian, even remotely or vague, with Sun legal webs. Good or bad, it is hard to say, but those people just hate Sun - maybe it is justified, maybe not, I don't know. I don't use Java very much and I won't be sad it to go. BUT lot of enterprise devs/admins are would be very happy to have "apt-getable" JRE in Debian/Ubuntu. So...I just don't know. Long years everyone bashed Sun that it didn't give us distribution freedom. And now when they give some rest and are willing to help in distribution of JRE - finally, I say - then these people comes up and say "GPL or nothing".

People are afraid of binary and commercial software. Afraid of lock-in. I understand them, it is very hard to say what future will bring. But this very childish flameware without even mentioning TRUE reasons of opposition has to stop.

And people, remember - yes, maybe those "freebies" are zealots, but they are so by cause. Sun can't be wholy trusted, as they have done very bad things in past - supported SCO recently and tried to cash in on IBM vs. SCO lawsuit, and binary only/commercial software tends to break or be simply untrustable (I speak from my 13 years admin expierence). And let's not talk about legal issues, which is totally black picture most of common crowd (they don't care about paying back credit sometimes, too). So they have some rights to be what they are and have opinions what they have. What I oppose in their action, that they simply don't want compromises. It is only thing I can say I don't like with them.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[andersa]

Most of what you are saying seems to make good sence.

I just want to note that the scripts I am talking about are not from blackdown. They are included in the contrib archive, and allows you to convert a sun java package to a .deb, so you can easily install it with dpkg.

See - http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/java-pack age

The package does not contain java, so licensing is less of an issue, but it helps you install java on Debian more easily.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[helicologic]

This is false. Sun java is available through, in non-free. That's what the whole argument is about. The package name is
sun-java5-jre
The package description says:

The Sun Java Platform Standard Edition Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 contains the Java virtual machine, runtime class libraries, and Java application launcher that are necessary to run programs written in the Java progamming language. It is not a development environment and doesn't contain development tools such as compilers or debuggers. For development tools, see the Java Development Kit JDK(TM) 5.0 (package sun-java5-jdk).
NOTE: You must accept Sun's EULA prior to successfully installing this package

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian can mean the Debian project or the Debian distribution. Human language does not mention everything but omitts the obvious parts. This can be confusing, and often children are confused and telling their parents to say what they mean and not play word games. But it can also confuse older people when they miss context.

So "Sun's java software is distributed by Debian but is not part of Debian" makes sense, because the first Debian clearly means "Debian project" as software cannot distribute anything, but only used to distribute. And the second Debian means "Debian distribution", because software cannot be part of a project, only humans can.

Now you can say, that your context and the language you speak, "Debian" can also means "any software ever distributed by Debian". But then I
could ask back what you meant by that second "Debian", and depending on the answer your term would either mean no software at all (as there is no legal entity called Debian), or would mean several other software and even undistributeable software (if you mean any software any Debian Developer shipped), or even whole releases of other distributions (if you insist everything shipped by Debian mirrors to be Debian).
Then you could simply make up a new meaning of Debian denoting the Debian distribution plus the additional sections non-free and contrib, that the Debian project supplies and supports to be used together with the Debian distribution. But then the answer is easy: Nice that you started to invent your own language, but please interpret what I say in the language the other people are speaking.

P.S. Note that I used the Java word only as adjective, never as noun in this article, as I used the old Java packages from Sun, and their license also commanded to never use it as a noun, but only as an adjective.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[petermgreen]

are you using unstable? if not you won't have seen any of this. if you are then the packages are there in non-free now.

basically what has happened is that sun recently introduced a new license for binary distribution of JAVA. The new license is intended for use by linux distros, but some are concerned that the interpretation of the license thats in suns FAQ is incorrect and could cause legal issues in the future (debian is paranoid about legal issues for a reason, they are a big project with pretty much everything they do publically visible).

The people in control of debian are supporting it but many others (including apparently debian-legal and spi) aren't.

Re:non-free is not part of debian

[andersa]

Ok.. Up to tree weeks ago, I would have been correct.. Honest mistake. Thanks for clearing things up.

Debian DPL

[Nighttime]

So that would be the Debian Debian Project Leader?

This post brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:Debian DPL

[Anonymous Coward]

So that would be the Debian Debian Project Leader?

CD Disk, HIV virus, DC current, IP protocol, PIN number, RAID array, ...

A.k.a. RAS syndrome.

A flamewar on the Debian Mailing lists?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Thats unpossible!

Re:A flamewar on the Debian Mailing lists?

[Mathiasdm]

Wait... Is that a cromulent word?

Politics

[ClamIAm]

Hmm ok I'm kind of surprised that the anti-Debian folks haven't jumped on this already. So....anyway, I guess that I'll inject my opinion anyway

Personally, I'm really glad we do have Debian. They don't shy away from politics, and I think that's a good thing. Why? Well, the Free Software/Open Source ideals are inherently political things. To shut up and just allow stuff to happen is almost completely opposite to the movements themselves.

Sure, you can claim that discussions like this hamper development. Maybe they do (although I doubt it). You can claim Debian is behind the times compared to Ubuntu or Gentoo or even Slackware depending on what you value. But these things do need to be discussed.

It might seem like a cop-out, but the following quote really stands out in my mind: "Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics; you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.". RMS said that. I think it sums up the situation rather well.

Re:Politics

[SqyD]

"you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone." ...sounds a lot like Ralph Nader two US presedential elections ago:
"If you're not turned on by politics, politics will turn on you..."

WTF?

[dotslashdot]

On the one hand, it's nice to see a fundamentalist Linux distribution like Debian standing up on principle against encroachment of commercialization. On the other hand, non-fundamentalists like the rest of us are puzzled at how much time the Debian team wastes in throwing tantrums over license purity instead of shipping their next version. I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

Re:WTF?

[/ASCII]

You mean unlike the non-fundamentalist distros like Fedora, Gentoo and Ubunto who have decided thatSUNs Java is not free enough to distribute and hence won't do it at all?

Re:WTF?

[joostje]

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

Of cource, that's the reason Debian is arguing: to ensure that *you* can use the distribution without being strip searched. The sun java licenses do have some strange clauses.

Re:WTF?

[cortana]

$ aptitude show sun-java5-jre | grep ^Maintainer
Maintainer: Matthias Klose

Ubuntu distributes the same packages that are in Debian in the multiverse component(? section? archive? what is the correct term here anyway?).

Re:WTF?

[Antique Geekmeister]

You are a target user of the software authors, such as Sun in this case. Debian is, correctly, noticing that the licensing of Sun does not permit them to distribute software they way they normally do it, with intact and compilable source and automatic compilation as needed.

These are not small matters: supporting such packages is a security and software management problem for Debian and other distributions, who often haven't included the Java packages for exactly this reason. Fedora Core 5, for example, seems to have discarded the jdk and jre (or whatever they're called this week) that they included in older OS releases. And Sun has been doing weirdness like slapping their installable RPM inside an executable binary, then renaming the basic packages, then insisiting on jumping through licensing agreement hoops simply to download the software. It's not appropriate in Linux or other open source systems, and is a compelling reason for extensive development of genuinely open source Java software, such as the gcc/Java projects.

Sun is duplicating, badly, what Adobe attempted to do with Postscript in creating a "public" but heavily licensed standard that only they can control the standards for. It's understandable, but is helping actually sideline Sun's particular Java version in favor of more robust ones such as IBM's, and fostering the same sort of open source replacement that ghostscript became for Postscript, and with gaining popularity of the open source version to the point where Sun will want to come up with a new software to license, much as Adobe is dumping Postscript and proceeding to PDF wherever feasible.

Re:WTF?

[Weird O'Puns]

Gentoo doesn't distribute Sun's Java? Then why do they have both sun-jdk and sun-jre in the official portage tree?

Re:WTF?

[kfg]

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

Well, then you better go talk to Sun, as Java is their product under their license and if you are being strip searched and violated it is by the Sun legal team.

And, oddly enough, that's exactly the step that Debian took, although they might have been wise to allow the persons legally responsible for certain terms of the license to be the ones to do the talking.

KFG

Re:WTF?

[iserlohn]

That's the ebuild script.

Re:WTF?

[Cal Paterson]

Gentoo doesn't actually distribute Sun Java. It's not hosted on any of the servers. The users must download and place the files themselves.

Just because an ebuild is in the tree, doesn't mean that Gentoo distribute it. Gentoo simply allows the user to use it, much like any other distribution.

As soon as GLEP 23 gets put into place, this kind of confusion will disappear.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu distributes nothing in multiverse. **You** set your system to include the multiverse list of repositories, **you** fetch the result. Ubuntu has already washed their hands of your system. Note the difference between a user enabling a list of external repositories, and a project distributing a package. When you have that distiction down pat, try and convey it to the Danish Police. They need a little help.

Re:WTF?

[mrchaotica]

When you emerge those packages, they prompt you to go to Sun's website and download the thing manually (agreeing to Sun's click-through license in the process). Once the archive (or is it a .bin? I forget) is in the /usr/portage/distfiles directory, you can re-run emerge to install it.

Re:WTF?

[Just Some Guy]

On the other hand, non-fundamentalists like the rest of us are puzzled at how much time the Debian team wastes in throwing tantrums over license purity instead of shipping their next version.

You're only puzzled because you don't "get" open distributions like Debian. There are thousands of people working on it at any given time, from kernel packagers to people watching the bug tracker. Among that crowd, quite a few of them are passionate about legal issues and qualified to argue them. You're hearing those people. Everyone else is still going about their business.

This is in much the same way that discussions inside a company's legal department don't involve the programming department until a relevant decision is made. It's not like the programmers have to sit on their hands until the debates are finished, and probably don't even know they're happening at any given time.

Re:WTF?

[TheSunborn]

The java included with Fedora is not the one from Sun. (And the default javac compiler, is jikes fro IBM, not javac from sun)

Re:WTF?

[ClamIAm]

If Debian was a "fundamentalist" distribution, they would not even have a section called "non-free". Of course, they are a little more picky than most about what's considered free vs. non-free (see: DFSG).

Re:WTF?

[metamatic]

And the irony is, by forcing the open source community to develop GCJ-based Java solutions, they're destroying the supposed raison d'etre of Java, to be able to take the same binary and run it anywhere.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

I hate it when somebody "searches and violates" me by not giving me the shit that I want, the way I want it, when I want it. What you say? I can get it from the shit's website directly? Fuck me. Who asked you?!

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of people who actually use GCJ is so minuscule that it's practically completely irrelevant. This is just another reason why Debian/Fedora will never become as popular as Windows and MacOS X. Most people don't give a shit about Debians ideology and just want software that works properly (which GCJ does not).

It's actually quite funny reading the Debian mailing list and seeing all these people who aren't lawyers discussing the license and getting it completely wrong. If Debian ever gets into legal trouble they better get some people who have some experience with law because the majority of the people on the mailing list obviously don't have a clue.

Re:WTF?

[cortana]

$ whois ubuntu.com ...
Registrant:
  Canonical Ltd.
  One Circular Road
  Douglas, Isle Of Man IM1 1AF
  UK

Looks like the Ubuntu guys to me.

Re:WTF?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

On the one hand, it's nice to see a fundamentalist Linux distribution like Debian standing up on principle against encroachment of commercialization. On the other hand, non-fundamentalists like the rest of us are puzzled at how much time the Debian team wastes in throwing tantrums over license purity instead of shipping their next version.

You're puzzlement is due to your own laziness. If you'd bothered to read the damn mailing list posts, you'd see that the issue has very little to do with the free-ness of the licences, and everything to do with a small group of people putting various groups in one of two positions: either that of indemnifying Sun, or of copyright infringement. This is because the Sun Java licenses just showed up in non-free without anybody bothering to ask about it in debian-legal.

I guess I'm not a target user of their system since I just want Java to work on my system without being strip searched and violated.

-1, Troll. apt-get install java-package has been around for a long time.

Re:WTF?

[Antique Geekmeister]

SuSE goes through similar fun and games with their access to NVidia drivers and some Microsoft fonts. The resulting mess in their installer, with packages that installed via shell script and others installed via RPM, means that the non-RPM packages are poorly managed and are nightmarish to automatically update at OS installation time.

Re:WTF?

[mrchaotica]

Oh, see, that's the great thing about Gentoo -- even though Sun's Java is meant to be installed as a shell script (or whatever), it's still wrapped in an ebuild so that the package manager knows about it. Same with nVidia drivers: download them to /usr/portage/distfiles, then run `emerge nvidia-kernel && emerge nvidia-glx`

Re:WTF?

[petermgreen]

but is helping actually sideline Sun's particular Java version in favor of more robust ones such as IBM's
isn't IBMs java variant based on sun source and under even more draconian (sun java you can binary redistribute under certain conditions, IBMs i'm pretty sure you can't) terms?

On the other hand...

[cranesan]

One the one hand, SPI works for Debian. So they should go along with whatever Debian says. On the other hand, how can Debian expect SPI to do its job right if they are not included in legal discussions. Both sides have merit. Wow, and I haven't even read the article yet!

Re:On the other hand...

[zsau]

Whereas I have, and from what I understand ... Debian doesn't *exist*, so Software in the Public Interest doesn't work for Debian; to the extent that Debian can get sued, it's SPI that gets sued. (Of course, it could be the individual debian developers that get sued in a certain circumstance.) Anyway, Goerzen is concerned that Debian developers have put SPI into a legally vulnerable position, and is objecting to the fact that SPI was never even consulted.

OTOH, as far as Debian and the SPI are concerned, they *are* distinct, and the SPI isn't meant to get involved in the inner workings of Debian.

So perhaps both sides do have *some* merit, but the arrangement sounds pretty precarious to me, and before it all topples over I think it needs to be re-thought, either with Debian split out from SPI, or Debian developers understanding their obligations to the SPI.

Re:On the other hand...

[dozer]

One the one hand, SPI works for Debian. So they should go along with whatever Debian says.

When you hire legal council, do you expect it to go along with everything you say? I sure hope not. Their whole point is to tell you when you're full of crap. If an attorney just agrees with you and then watches you get into just as much trouble as you would have on your own, well, what's the point in that?

So basically...

[SargeantLobes]

... the new debian project leader acepts a legal arangement with Sun, without running it by their legal consultants. And when their legal consultants complain that they would like to have been consulted. The new Debian project leader says something like if you don't like it, you an pack up your sh*t and leave.

SPI is right to be pissed. They're Debians legal representation, and if some guy makes a stupid decission, without consulting them, it'll look baad for THEM (and not Debian). The legal implications of this thing could be huge.And as the guy said, you can't trust Sun to look iut for Debians best interests.

Re:So basically...

[joostje]

the new debian project leader acepts a legal arangement with Sun

From my reading of the thread, the project leader accepted a legal argument from sun, when sun confirmed it's OK to distribute java. The project leader (or ftp-masters) then went on to add java to the non-free archive, without consulting SPI. This is BTW the same as ftp-masters does with other non-free packages (they themselves deside whether to include them in non-free or not). Usually debian doesn't really care very mutch what goes into non-free, as that isn't an official part of debian anyway.

Re:So basically...

[Wyzard]

Non-free isn't "officially" part of Debian, but Debian still distributes it, so they do care quite a lot about license compliance. The only thing that gives Debian any permission to distribute that software is the licenses, so Debian must not violate any licenses or it loses its permission to distribute and can be sued for copyright infringement.

Debian Stable

[zaguar]

Anthony Towns, the newly elected Debian Project Lead, offering to separate Debian from its legal representative, SPI.

Bet they're regretting not running stable on Andy Towns now.

java

[wjsroot]

Some people will do anything for a good cup of coffee.

Relationship between Debian and SPI?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Debian had a problem with parts of the Sun license, some Debian people had a private chat with Sun, and Sun basically said "don't worry about it, we won't enforce the license in that way". That's unremarkable.

What does surprise me is that the Debian people were silly enough to go "oh, that's alright then", and start distributing the software under this license, with nothing more than Sun's word, which they can't back up with any written communication whatsoever.

I don't get how SPI are involved though. What is the relationship between Debian and SPI? It seems SPI considers Debian to have agreed to this license on behalf of both Debian and SPI, but this doesn't really make any sense because the relationship is unclear. Can anybody clarify this?

Re:Relationship between Debian and SPI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a laywer, this is not legal commentary or advice or anything of the sort.

Exactly what is the relationship is a good question. Digging into it, it's a heck of a lot more than your normal laywer-client relationship. Read on..

"SPI projects shouldn't be taking advice from Sun's attorneys. We should be taking advice from SPI's attorneys" states the second of the linked articles.

Which does indeed suggest that, at least from a legal point of view, Debian is merely a project of SPI's. In fact, if you whois on debian.org, sure enough, SPI are the registrant.

In fact, in http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg00 287.html, it seems that Debian doesn't even EXIST as a legal entity. Thus, who is taking the legal risk of Debian's actions should Sun decide to sue? (In other words, who would Sun sue?) http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg00 293.html explores that issue. It is either the ftp-master people themselves (the individuals!) or SPI, who (understandably) wish to limit their legal exposure.

Now, it could be argued that the people that made the ftp decision are legally responsible, not SPI. But SPI isn't sure that they could proove that in a court of law (honestly, it would be difficult to get a jury to follow.) And, anyway, if the ftp maintiners are legally responsible, don't you think somebody should tell them the risk that they are personally facing?

SPI figure they should have some say in decisions that could get them sued. Anothony reckons that SPI have nothing to fear and it's just SPI power grabbing for veto.

(Should SPI have such a power? Are they taking all the legal risk? If they are taking all the risk, should they have veto? Are Debian people acting as representatives of SPI? I leave that to you to decide.)

Re:Relationship between Debian and SPI?

[Arker]

Debian is a distributed community project with no real existence in a legal sense.

SPI (Software in the Public Interest) is a non-profit organisation created to handle things for Debian that require a legal existence. Like, for instance, having legal staff available.

A bit confused

[Umbral Blot]

Let me get this straight, the programmers behind Debian are threatening to give their legal team the boot? So it could be good, because sometimes lawyers suck, or it could be bad, because it implies Debian is about to make a huge legal mistake. Does anyone have a link to what the actual dispute is about, because the summary is lacking in details? (although it does have more than its fair share of alphabet soup: DPL, SPI, JDL)

Fighting ideologic wars

[wysiwia]

It's sad that Debian always provoke such ideologic wars as if no more important work and decisions are needed. What does it matter if Java is in none-free or else. Who cares much except users who just want to download a distribution as easy as possible.

IMO there are bigger issues at stake for Debian. The upcoming Ubuntu distribution is threatening to replace Debian as the leading distribution. The GPL v3 does nowhere fit in well into the DFSG. The Linux desktop while each year announced does not take place. It seems Debian people just fights these wars so nobody notices the real threads Debian is faced with.

I've myself switched to Ubuntu since I'm not happy with Debian anymore and I'm most probably don't write about the Linux desktop in the Debian mailing lists anymore etc. Any I'm quite sure quite a lot of others do the same. I've simply got tired of all this ideologic stuff.

O. Wyss

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[gowen]

It's sad that Debian always provoke such ideologic wars as if no more important work and decisions are needed.

Ideology is easy, releases are hard.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[drsmithy]

The upcoming Ubuntu distribution is threatening to replace Debian as the leading distribution.

Er, leading distribution of what ?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[ndogg]

It matters to the ideologues to set forth the definitions of Open Source. It matters to the people to called their OS Debian GNU/Linux rather than just Linux. It matters to the people who continue to call their OS Debian GNU/Linux.

Ideology may not be practical, but practicality without ideology has no direction.

Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?
Where would open source be without the FSF?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[mverwijs]

I've simply got tired of all this ideologic stuff.

Folks, this is coming from a guy who wrote:
Just imagine that if every application and every game were coded cross-platform everybody just could go into any shop and buy any computer they like.

Tired of ideologic stuff indeed.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Toba82]

Come on now, we all know he's talking about GNU/Linux.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Tom]

As much as I dislike these legal discussions, I see the point. Debian is a kind of afraid of all the DRM, IP lawsuit, patent law and other bullshit and tries to stear well clear of it. Debian people realize that these things don't hit you in isolated spots - they're like dum-dum bullets, they expand inside the body.

Look at SCO or any patent claim. There's maybe 1% or less of your code that is possibly in violation of someone else's thing. And yet it threatens your entire product.

The following scenario is unlikely - but if it ever does come to pass, we will all thank whatever gods we believe in for Debian to be there and for having been as strict as they are:

Imagine MS or possibly a small group of likewise evil, selfish companies whose only way of "winning" in the marketplace is to destroy their opponents. Imagine them banding together and using a combination of software patents, DRM and DMCA lawsuits and a couple copyright disputes to drag Linux into an endless legal battle. Imagine that different from the SCO they can somehow construct a case that at least appears solid enough to a judge that Redhat and SuSE and whoever you have get slapped with a preliminary injunction. Maybe it's just 2 packages that are a problem, but the judge orders a stop to the distribution until the entire thing can be resolved. You don't think MS would have much haste in getting it resolved, would you?

This or any other scenario like it wouldn't mean the end of Linux - you'd still be able to get your copy from some FTP in Sweden or China, but it would bring Linux progress into the enterprise market to a halt.
Unless there is a Debian that can point to documentation and lawyer papers and to the fact that they always acted with so much dilligence that it is very certain none of their stuff ever got tainted.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Anonymous Coward]

>Ideology may not be practical, but practicality without ideology has no direction.
Bollocks.

> Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?
It wouldnt exist, but BSD would.

> Where would open source be without the FSF?
Open source was around long before FSF. FSF just did a good clone of unix commands. Maybe we wouldnt have classpath. Nothing against
the developers, but Java as a whole is just moving too fast for them. They would be better off spending their time within JCP speeding
up the opening process that is currently going on within the Java community.

Back to the subject, it is great to see developers stick up for themselves against ??? legal opinion.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[arose]

What does it matter if Java is in none-free or else. Who cares much except users who just want to download a distribution as easy as possible.

You could aw wella ask why it matters if Windows is in non-free, in both cases it's about law, not ideology.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because making it difficult to get hold of codecs isn't ideo-logical at all. Also, as pointed out by a number of other people ubuntu is just a debian that adds more stuff like autodetection, sensible default configuration and a consistant graphical style to make the overall experience smoother. Ubuntu isn't even a fork of debian, the projects live off each other in the same way as a number of pieces of free software. This isn't that ideological anyway though as it's over moving what's essentially non-free software to the free repo from what I understand.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Bronster]

Let me provide a translation of the grandparent.

"Wouldn't it be great if everything worked in a way which is most convenient for me"

a sentiment I strongly agree with by the way, with the obvious substitution of me for "me".

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[mikeage]

Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?

In the center of a group of friends?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[drsmithy]

Come on now, we all know he's talking about GNU/Linux.

Really ? I had no idea...
</SARCASM>

What I meant, was exactly which aspect of the Linux marketplace is Debian "leading" in ?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[byolinux]

Where would open source be without the FSF?

The FSF has nothing to do with 'Open Source' and plenty to do with Free Software (and yes, there's a difference)

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[wysiwia]

What I meant, was exactly which aspect of the Linux marketplace is Debian "leading" in ?

You seem to be not a developer else you would know what "leading" I meant. For many years OpenSource developers preferred Debian over all other distributions because of various reasons. IMO the most important reason is, you could easily mix a stable distribution with experimental packages which sometimes were essential for development. Yet Debian has fallen back in providing enough recent packages and yet Ubuntu can equally be intermixed. So Debian is loosing upstream developers. I might overestimate or you might underestimate what this effect means for Debian but it's definitely not good.

O. Wyss

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[wysiwia]

You could aw wella ask why it matters if Windows is in non-free, in both cases it's about law, not ideology.

Three weeks argumenting back and fore isn't law or at least not understand by the posters.

O. Wyss

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[wysiwia]

"Wouldn't it be great if everything worked in a way which is most convenient for me"

Very accurate translation, thank you very much.

O. Wyss

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[arose]

But that is what the whole thing is about.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Rhett's Dad]

I have to agree. Obviously it's nice to think we can hide in our hacker darkroom and pretend all the legal crap is only in reruns of "Law & Order". Open source groups that are large/smart enough to prepare themselves against possible legal action help take some of the uncertainty out of contributors' minds, allowing them to focus on true development contributions.

Unfortunately, it smells like some of the occasional hacker anarchy could prevail here, just because of some suddenly rampant "kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight" attitudes making the most noise.

I hope Gentoo manages to survive after Debian has imploded itself.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly, I am a developer, and the only people I know who use Debian are the open source fanatics who refuse to touch anything that's not open. Over here in the real world, on the other hand, I know many, many more professional developers who use either Red Hat or SuSE. Why would I want to use experimental packages, anyway? When you're making a living off of your programming, you don't want to install packages that could break your system or make things unstable.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[krmt]

Debian is adding new members to the project faster than Ubuntu, despite Ubuntu's position on distrowatch. Ubuntu is doing great and exciting work, but they haven't been able to build a distribution that can be sustained by volunteer work alone. That's why people say that without Debian, Ubuntu couldn't exist. Debian doesn't need upstream developers to be involved with Debian, it needs people who are committed to Debian to be involved in Debian, and that's still happening.

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is FSFFree, it's open source.
If something is open source, it MIGHT be FSFFree. Maybe. Depending on the license.
If something is proprietary, it's not either FSFFree or OS.

Then there is the thing that, you know, they work together. You know, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html talks about it. Oh, and there are some small peices of software you may have heard of. I think they are called, um, "Linux", and maybe a bunch of stuff by a group calling it all "GNU"?

Re:Fighting ideologic wars

[Anonymous Coward]

"You seem to be not a developer else you would know what "leading" I meant."

Debian has never been the leader. Ubuntu is currently the leader by a huge margin and prior to that RedHat and Suse were the leaders. Both RedHat and Suse were well ahead of the competition in terms of adoption and user base.

Debian Fundamentalist Licensing Kooks

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically you are agreeing that the Debian folks are fundamentalist licensing kooks who are being left behind by the computing world as it standardizes on distros like Ubuntu that aren't encumbered by loonies.

"Hmm ok I'm kind of surprised that the anti-Debian folks haven't jumped on this alread"

What more needs to be said after your comment?

Thank God for Debian

[XanC]

First, without Debian, Ubuntu would be nothing. More importantly, as long as Debian exists, we know that we have access to an unencumbered, workable, and complete operating system / userspace. Should everything else hit the fan, we know there's still Debian.

Plus, stable's great for servers.

Re:Thank God for Debian

[Svartalf]

If Debian makes an "oops" on a licensing item, they might not "still be there".

That's what all this brouhaha is about.

Re:Thank God for Debian

[dilute]

Amen! And thank God for the GPL as well.

However, it must also be said that Java does not play well with Linux, and this is a major problem for Linux users. The Java substitutes on Debian never seem to cut it - among other things, they tend to be a version behind. You download a package from somewhere - it just runs under Windows, every time, but on Debian, Ubuntu, very often something will break. Fedora doesn't seem to fully solve the problem either, but I have very limited experience on it and may be missing something. Maybe there are gurus out there who can really work around this, but I've come to the conclusion that I can't rely on Linux when I have something that needs major a Java component. I try to avoid Java, but there are too many things that are implemented better on Java than on anything else. What I've ended up doing is keeping a Windows machine to provide the necessary services over the network, and hosting the rest on Linux.

A good example here is Lucene, the wonderful text indexing engine written in Java (and itself completely free, except for the language that it is implemented in). While Lucene has been extensively ported, you also end up needing the related document filters (PDF, Word, etc.) that are far better implemented in Java than anywhere else, at least in the form of a code library or component that you can natively include or link. Inevitably, you need a piece that is only available in Java, and inevitably, you run into problems trying to use such pieces under Linux.

All this is probably why Debian would love to find a way to include real Sun Java.

Still, in my estimation, it just isn't worth it to accept flawed license terms in order to solve this problem. Screw it. Debian, of all the distributions, must remain free. It is the bedrock, as you say. Let Sun be the one to yield on this.

I am hoping that more people will start writing things in Ruby and that more of the major packages in Java will be ported to Ruby.

More pressure needs to be put on Sun.

Re:Thank God for Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

"However, it must also be said that Java does not play well with Linux, and this is a major problem for Linux users."

Java does "play" very well with Linux. GCJ is not Java and real Java (ie. Sun Java) works just as expected under Linux. The reason you're experiencing problems is because you're trying to run Java programs with something that is not Java. Furthermore, GCJ will never work properly because most Java developers simply don't care about the so called "licensing issues". The vast majority of the Java community is against Debian and Fedora on this issue and therefore there's only a very small number of people who are willing to waste time contributing to a broken project like GCJ.

Re:Thank God for Debian

[Eivind Eklund]

Free, Net, Open, and DragonFlyBSD also cover this, with care about a license-clean base system.

NetBSD has even done a lot of work to minimize the number of license formulations, making it easy to embed. When you've got different formulations of the BSD license - even the 3 clause variant - you have to reproduce all the formulations in the documentation for the product. This can be a real hazzle[1].

Eivind.

[1] I also see this as making it a GPL license violation to combine GPLv2 code with BSD licensed code, even when the BSD license has few clauses.

Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the problems:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3 70245

The US places export restrictions on certain types of software (mostly encryption related stuff), which Sun has reflected in it's license. Since Debian can't/won't control which country has access to US-based mirrors then that means that they can't fuffill the obligation to screen out illegal downloads from certain countries and such. According to this license the work around Debian has used in the past is to have non-US for exported restricted software. Which is basicly you can only have the software on non-US based mirrors.

Debian has gotten rid of non-US for Sarge due to the relaxation of export controls by the U.S. government. But it would still violate Sun's licensing.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3 70295

This is Sun's obnoxiousness showing with this one:
""" (c) you do not combine, configure or distribute the Software to
        run in conjunction with any additional software that implements
        the same or similar functionality or APIs as the Software;"""

The bug author mentions the Java version of Python, but basicly it would make things like a distro shipping GCJ and Sun's java would be a licensing violation.

Obviously (in My eyes) Sun chooses this for two reasons:
A. To keep it's java runtime pure and functional. Avoids bug-inducing conflicts.
B. Help kill off Free software java implimentation.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3 70296

In Sun's License states that you can't modify any sort of copyright notices and whatnot. But by splitting the package up like Debian does they can't avoid modifying this stuff. Thusly Debian is violating Sun's distribution license.

Debian can ship non-free stuff in non-free obviously according to their bylaws.. but Debian doesn't have the authority to break OTHER people's licenses.

Sun says that this is OK and it's legal mumbo jumbo they can ignore. Debian's lawyer are basicly saying we can't violate Sun's licenses... ESPECIALLY without a discussion and you should pull the package from non-free until Sun fixes it's licensing so that Debian can use it legally.

This has happenned before with other software. Sun's license is shit and should be avoided by any sort of sane Linux distribution.

not really

[sentientbrendan]

>Why? Well, the Free Software/Open Source ideals are inherently political things.

Nothing about using linux or writing OSS, requires me to jump on your political bandwagon.

I'm sure that open source is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is software, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.

Personally, as much as I use and love some open source software, I think that it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want, including a closed source one. I don't even think it would be a good thing if all software was open source. I think that closed source development is an important business model for many people.

Re:not really

[halfcuban]

I'm sure that open source is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is software, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.

No one's dragging you into anything. I'm tired of everytime someone states their support for the ideals of OSS and the general concept of copyleft, DRM-less, etc etc styled licensing, that everyone starts getting their panties in a bunch that someone else is dragging them into some sort of political battle. No one's holding a gun to your head and making you donate to the FSF or the Xiph Foundation.

What the parent says is true, however. The ideals are political things even if the software, in and of itself, isn't, or its potential uses (Linux can be used to host pirate movie servers just as easily as a Naval computer for missle targetting) are all over the map. The concepts Debian as a distro expounds upon are distinctly in favor of those said political ideas, and most people who choose Debian as a distro also share it.

Personally, as much as I use and love some open source software, I think that it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want, including a closed source one. I don't even think it would be a good thing if all software was open source. I think that closed source development is an important business model for many people.

The parent is not suggesting that at all, and you're setting up a straw man argument, not unlike whats his name who sued the FSF, that OSS is somehow out to artificially rig the game by forcing all software to be free/open source/or under some sort of GNU public license.

Re:not really

[ajs318]

I am sure that racial equality is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is people, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.

Personally, as much as I use and love some black people, I think that it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to employ people on whatever terms they want, including a whites-only one. I don't even think it would be a good idea if all workplaces were mixed-race. I think that a single-race work environment is an important business model for many people.

Re:not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously suggesting that not firmly believing in the political ideals of FOSS is akin to racial discrimination?

You are exactly the sort of zealot the GP was railing about. The, err...uncle poster, halfcuban, might do well to get a look at this post and see that the GP was not purely setting up a strawman.

Re:not really

[ClamIAm]

Nearly any time there is a choice between different things, one's choices are political. When you buy something, you are in effect giving support to its production. The same is true for software, even if you aren't "buying" it.

Re:not really

[ajs318]

Yes, I am.

Abuse of liberty is abuse of liberty whatever form it takes. Before white and black people ever walked on the same land, there was no such thing as race discrimination: every one of your neighbours had the same colour skin as you. We think now that people have the right to be treated the same whatever the colour of their skin.

By the same token, before computers existed, Software Users' Rights weren't an issue. Today, we should be able to count among our basic rights the right to enjoy the use of software without interference, the right to study the source code of the software we use, the right to share the code with our neighbours and the right to adapt the software we use to our individual needs. Those rights exist because software exists, and only because software exists.

Telling people what they can and cannot do with what they own violates the right to enjoy. Telling people that they cannot inspect the software they use violates the right to study. Telling people that they cannot give a copy of the software that they use to their neighbour violates the right to share and telling people that they cannot modify the software, but must modify their workflow to match the software, violates the right to adapt. All these things constitute the unfair imposition of one person's will upon another, and as such should be condemned as acts of violence.

It is precisely because people like you go around thinking that one violation of fundamental human rights is any less deplorable than another, that people's rights continue to be violated.

Re:not really

[bfree]

You espouse the political ideals as your own yet claim that your should not be dragged in to them. The very idea that a programmer could choose to distribute Free Software is in political danger (dmca/eucd, idea patents) and non-free software is being threatened at a political level (government purchasing rules primarily). If you

think it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want

then you should consider how your vote might change the future of these "business models".

In most areas of politics there are no Free Software implications. In fact never forget that things like the Debian Free Software Guidelines make absolutely explicit that the community can never try to cut out any group of people, even terrorists. Free Software is free for all whatever your political ideals, but do not think that this means Free Software is not political, it just limits it's politics to a few key areas which are required for it's continued existence.

Re:not really

[pintpusher]

Nothing about using linux or writing OSS, requires me to jump on your political bandwagon.

You're absolutely right, and that's what's great about it. You can take it or leave it however you like. You can choose to ignore the politics of the situation or not. Debian chooses to NOT ignore the politics, plain and simple.

However, I think its largely disingenuous to claim that the politics don't matter to you.

I'm sure that open source is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is software, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.

You can ignore it, but it does matter. You've based a business model on OSS. What will you do when the gov't legislates OSS out of existence? (yes I know it's highly unlikely, but for arguments sake) Or what will you do when one of the licenses get trumped in court somehow? Or a critical piece of code falls to copyright suit? You can bet your damn bippy that the politics of it will matter to you then. And it is your political battle, just as a supreme court battle is your political battle, ignore it though you might. Some people choose to pay attention to these issues in advance while others sit on the sidelines (me too, frankly) and wait to see what happens. .02

Re:not really

[kscguru]

You can do the same thing that happens when that licensee or critical piece of code from a proprietary vendor gets sued out of existence. These problems are not unique to the Free Software world.

And while I'm at it ... take a second to reread your post. It's FUD, pure and simple. We're used to FUD that says 'proprietary is safer', now we're starting to see FUD that says 'OSS may die, give us your support'. I happen to like OSS, make use of OSS in my everyday life, but being pulled into politics because of FUD does not appeal to me. And I realize you aren't trying to pull me in, but you are using the same rhetoric as people who are.

Re:not really

[jb.hl.com]

I think the point is that racial discrimination is unfairly judging and acting against someone because of a factor they cannot change, something which leads to societal problems and many other ill effects all the way up from a simple "it makes people sad". Not having open source software means you don't get to look at computer code. Boo fucking hoo, frankly.

Anyway, back on topic, I remember a comment somewhere here saying "I bought a hammer because I wanted to bash some nails in, I didn't want to join some kind of hammer cult". Same thing.

Re:not really

[darthwader]

Upon re-reading the post, I think I'm being sucked in by a troll. But since I've put so much effort (almost 10 minutes) into writing my reply, I'll post it anyway:

With all due respect, that's a load of crap.

Before white people and black people walked on the same land, one clan of white people killed and enslaved another group of white people in one land, and one tribe of black people killed and enslaved another tribe of black people in a different land. Race (or tribe, family, clan, gender) discrimination has existed for as long as there have been people and weapons that people could use on each other.

Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.

Why should you have the right to enjoy? If I put a year's work into creating a beautiful garden, why should you automatically have the right to enjoy it? If I want to charge $10 per head admission, what's wrong with that? I deserve to be rewarded for my effort in creating the garden that you are enjoying.

Why should you have the right to inspect or study? If I spend years of my life trying to solve a problem, and during that year I manage to create a solution that nobody else has thought of, why should you get the benefit of that? Why can't I ask (or require) you to pay me to use that solution which I have worked so hard to create? And the only way I can be sure that people are fairly paying me for the use of my solution is for me to keep it secret.

Why should you have the right to share? That's got to be the silliest "right" I've heard of. If I spend a year of my time creating something, I'd like to be rewarded for that year of effort. Ideally, I'd like to be rewarded somewhere around $100,000 for that year of my life. I could try to sell one copy of my work for $100,000, but nobody wants it that much. So I want to sell 10,000 copies for $10. That way, I get rewarded, and 6000 people get to benefit from my work. Everyone's happy. But if you pay $10 for my work and then "share" it with the 9999 other people, I only get $10 for a year's work. That's good for your and your friends, but not good for me.

We live in a society where we exchange "money" for "things of value". As long as software is a "thing of value", people have a right to want to have "money" exchanged for it.

Re:not really

[pintpusher]

Well it certainly wasn't my intention to spread FUD, but to merely make the point that the politics do matter. The choice to be involved is personal and I fault no one for their involvement or lack thereof.

So to restate my point: The politics matter whether one thinks they do or not. Why? If you rely on Debian and Debian makes a choice without fully analysing the politics of it and the choice ends up bringing down Debian, on which you rely, then it has mattered to you. How's that for a nice piece of circular, insufficiently-caffeinated logic for ya! :)

And again, to be involved in these sorts of decisions or not is a personal matter and I believe no one should be pulled into it unwillingly. But to claim these things don't matter is just wrong. IMVHO.

Sorry for the splattering.

Re:not really

[swillden]

Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.

Stop right here, because the rest of your post is based on this assumption, and it's wrong.

Modern copyright (I use the adjective "modern" to distinguish it from the original formulation of copyright, whose primary purpose was censorship by the British Crown) was not created because people have any implicit or explicit right to benefit financially from their intellectual creations. In fact, the reason we have copyright law today is because enlightened government leaders felt that the *public* has a right to benefit culturally and intellectually from the work of authors, painters, composers, etc.

Let me say that again: The purpose of copyright law is to benefit the public, not the copyright holder.

The reason society invests in granting and enforcing the inherently artificial monopoly that is copyright is to ensure that creations are distributed far and wide, so that they can spark other creations and enrich the public domain. Any benefits that accrue to the creator are incidental. All human intellectual creations are presumed to ultimately belong to the entire human race, which is why copyrights must expire and why the granted monopoly is full of holes (fair use, compulsory licensing, etc.).

That's the theory underlying US copyright law. The fact that the law on the books no longer reflects the theory very well is a problem we need to fix, not reinforce.

Re:not really

[Eivind Eklund]

In case you're not aware/remembering: Copyleft and OSS are significantly different. I support OSS, I support free software, and I despise copyleft (for, in my evaluation, hurting free software.)

Eivind.

Re:not really

[Eivind Eklund]

By enforcing those "rights", you're taking away the rights of the users to get the risk-adjusted best software they can get (which require somebody to take the experimental risk of incremental development and be paid back by user community).

In a way, the reality of the world sucks - I'd love to be able to say "Give me all your changes and let me do whatever I want" about all software, yet legislating that denies most users (those that can't program or don't have time to write the kind of software they need) the ability to use standard economics to get hold of what they need (in their evaluation) without taking on undue risk.

If I license my own codebase under a license creating the requirements you say, I effectively create a local law applying to my codebase removing this right from them.

I hate removing rights. I remove those I absolutely have to - I add a license so I can disclaim all liability - and let the users keep the rest.

Eivind.

Re:not really

[ajs318]

Why should you have the right to enjoy? If I put a year's work into creating a beautiful garden, why should you automatically have the right to enjoy it? If I want to charge $10 per head admission, what's wrong with that? I deserve to be rewarded for my effort in creating the garden that you are enjoying.

Um ..... No, actually, you don't. It's up to the rest of society to determine whether you should be rewarded, not you.

No-one is an island. All the fruits of all human endeavour belong to all of humankind. When you created your garden, you were building on the hard work of others who had gone before. What did you do about rewarding them?

Why should you have the right to inspect or study? If I spend years of my life trying to solve a problem, and during that year I manage to create a solution that nobody else has thought of, why should you get the benefit of that? Why can't I ask (or require) you to pay me to use that solution which I have worked so hard to create? And the only way I can be sure that people are fairly paying me for the use of my solution is for me to keep it secret.

I'll say it again: No-one is an island. All the fruits of all human endeavour belong to all of humankind. Why shouldn't other people get the benefit of "your" solution? In the course of finding it, you were building on the hard work of others who had gone before. Just because you thought of it first doesn't mean somebody else wouldn't have thought of it sooner or later, more likely sooner.

In addition, before I allow any program written by anyone to run on my computer, I want to know exactlywhat it's going to do; just in case it does nasty things. I think this is entirely reasonable; I don't let strange code onto my computer any more than I let strangers into my home. You wouldn't eat food without checking the ingredients. You wouldn't buy a suit without trying it on. You wouldn't employ someone without interviewing them. If you want me to run your program on my computer, you're first going to have to prove to me that it will do what I want it to do and not do anything I don't want it to do. The easiest way to accomplish that is for you to show me the source code.

If you really want to keep the source code secret from me, you can run the code on your computer; I'll send you the data to process, and you can send me back the results. And you can rest assured that as soon as I figure out what your program is doing, I'll write my own program to do the same thing -- and share it with the world.

Why should you have the right to share? That's got to be the silliest "right" I've heard of. If I spend a year of my time creating something, I'd like to be rewarded for that year of effort. Ideally, I'd like to be rewarded somewhere around $100,000 for that year of my life. I could try to sell one copy of my work for $100,000, but nobody wants it that much. So I want to sell 10,000 copies for $10. That way, I get rewarded, and 6000 people get to benefit from my work. Everyone's happy. But if you pay $10 for my work and then "share" it with the 9999 other people, I only get $10 for a year's work. That's good for your and your friends, but not good for me.

So what? There are more of us than there are of you. And look on the bright side, it's still ten dollars more than you've any right to expect.

The whole "I deserve to be rewarded for my effort" mentality is behind a lot of what's wrong with the world. Tell you what, why don't you go and whinge at the sewage company because they should be rewarding you for the shit you flush into their pipes?

Re:not really

[ajs318]

Not having open source software means you don't get to look at computer code. Boo fucking hoo, frankly.

You really think it's as simple as that?

"Not getting to look at computer code" means all sorts of bad effects on all levels of society. Problems with computer systems go unrepaired, productivity is lost, time is wasted, probably even a few lives have been lost. All because of some stupid little problems which would never have existed in the first place, if only it was law that the supplier of software had to include the source code and permit the purchaser to inspect and modify it.

Anyway, back on topic, I remember a comment somewhere here saying "I bought a hammer because I wanted to bash some nails in, I didn't want to join some kind of hammer cult". Same thing.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, hammering nails has become a highly-charged political issue. Some hammer manufacturers want you only using it with their brand of nails and will try to take away your hammer if you try to use it to knock in another manufacturer's nails. Some hammer manufacturers don't want you to be allowed to buy your own hammer at all, but to have to rent it from them on a pay-per-hit basis. And some nail manufacturers want to try to stop you telling other people how many hits it takes to knock in one of their nails .....

Re:not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning from and improving our tools is the important part of being human. People who give up the ability to do that might as well be thin cattle; intelligence is wasted on them.

Re:not really

[darthwader]

Copyright law exists (should exist) to balance the rights of the creators to profit from their works and the rights of society to profit from the works. That's why there is a limited monopoly.

You are right that current laws are skewing the blance greatly toward the creator (actually, to the corporation that paid the creator), and I think that's wrong.

However, I interperted the grandparent poster as saying there should be no copyright at all, and that the balance should be skewed to the public. I think that would be equally wrong.

Re:not really

[swillden]

Copyright law exists (should exist) to balance the rights of the creators to profit from their works and the rights of society to profit from the works.

No, copyright must strike a balance, but the balance is not between the rights of the creators and the rights of society. The creators have no inherent rights; the constitutional basis of copyright law implicitly assumes that all knowledge belongs to all mankind.

The balance that copyright law must strike is balancing the advantages and disadvantages to the public.

However, I interperted the grandparent poster as saying there should be no copyright at all, and that the balance should be skewed to the public. I think that would be equally wrong.

The whole point of copyright law is to benefit the public, but not having copyright law would be to the public's detriment, since it would eliminate the incentive for publishing, which would impoverish the public domain. In the Internet age the damage wouldn't be as bad as previously, because the Internet lowers the cost of distribution so dramatically. It would also halt production of expensive-to-produce content, at least until other mechanisms (contractual or technical) for restricting content were devised. Those other mechanisms would also almost certainly be even more restrictive to the public than copyright law is.

'repository' (n/t)

[weierstrass]

n/t

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Umbral Blot]

They should hire you to write the summaries instead.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Antique Geekmeister]

Similar things happened with Pine, which has similarly restrictive licensing. But Sun doesn't even publish source, which makes it even harder to deal with legally.

Those inanities are discussed in good depth at http://www.asty.org/articles/20010702pine.html. I highly recommend it as a good discussion of how bad licensing of "free" software can actually prevent it from being "open" and deliberately hinder people who want to work with it. Sun's licensing is similarly restrictive, with that caveat that Sun doesn't develop source code for Java. Washington University at least publishes their source code, even if you're not allowed to publish modifications of it under any circumstances.

Control Freak

[Anonymous Coward]

Towns is turning this into a control issue when the Goerzen is just saying "Hey, it's not that tough to just run it buy our lawyers. Forewarned is forearmed."

I was part of a project that ended up blowing up. I was in SPI's position, just trying to keep everyone on the same page and help the person in control acheive goals. The person in control turned it into a control issue. It never was and I made every effort to make that clear. There was never any history to even suggest control issues. Finally, after much abuse, I left and so did several other people important to the project who knew what was going on. It turned out there were ideological problems, with the controller essentially wanting things one way while telling people things were to be another way in order to keep those people around.

Towns reminds me of the control freak of our own project. That was how it began - an irrational unwillingness to even hear what was being said and attributing everything as an attempt to control the project. Towns needs to step back and take a break. He needs some perspective. If there is anything he's not telling folks, he needs to come out with it. Because until that happens, anything he does is probably going to be to the detriment of Debian.

Re:Control Freak

[sendtwogrey]

Yep, sounds like the last ditch attempt of a nobody clinging to the skirts of the successful, in a vain hope that they may be mistaken for somebody, to me as well. Is there a metal condition that explains this type condition? My old boss was also afflicted with a similar condition, where by changing one or to lines of random code equated to him claiming credit for the conceptual, design and coding. Weird!

Re:Control Freak

[Anonymous Coward]

A "control issue" that's completely one-sided? Bullshit.

The question is: Why does Debian even bother with all the faux-democratic crap when the elected people don't have the power to do anything. Why doesn't the Debian Politburo just appoint a General Secretary for life and be done with it?

A threat?

[Nutria]

I've been following this thread on the list, and Towns' comment can only be taken as a threat if your adrenalin is pumping and your argument mode is set to Religion.

What??

[mr_tenor]

Ideologic war?

A small group of people has, it seems, in secret put Debian into a very dangerous legal position, without consulting the people who have the relevent legal expertise.

Non-free is distributed anyway

[alexhs]

Non-free is not supported by Debian, but it is distributed anyway.

The "fight" is about licensing issues caused by Debian distributing java, as
discussed in the thread, as a follow-up to the comment linked by Slashdot.

Great to see that the developers break free

[john_sd1]

Great to see that the Debian developers start to break free from the strangulation of debian-legal and their overly religious OSS zealotry. It is usually debian-legal who pretends to act "in the name of the user" whereas the opposite is true and explains in large parts the success of Ubuntu.

There are two types of OSS developers out there:

• the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
• the RMS type "OSS is religion"

The group of the relgious people however manages to silence the more pragmatic ones in the name of "higher ideals". But what is worse is that the concept of meritocracy fails too. Most of the people on debian-legal are no lawyers at all but amidst the blind the one eyed is king - even if color blind and short sighted.

Example from debian-legal of a discussion about postgres:

> What sort of legal advice has Debian consulted that came to a > different opinion? There is a sizable pool of people that regularly examine licenses for Debian, looking for problems. Debian does not regularly consult practicing attorneys on these issues. debian-legal

How could the situation be better exposed: "people (without any merits) looking for problems". That's what they are. All developers would reject a mailing list "debian-techadvice" where clueless people could make binding technical decisions, i.e. whether to use gcc 4.0 or 4.1.

One has to go through a notorious process to become a developer but it just needs an email client and a subscription to debian-legal in order to strangle 1500 developers. Time to change Debian back from a supermarket thing to one of the leaders of technology. Congrats Anthony!

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two types of OSS developers out there:

• the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
• the RMS type "OSS is religion"

You are right. And, when it comes to legal matters, the nitpicking RMS approach wins.

For example, GNU have been requiring paper trails for copyright contributions for decades. Linus didn't bother doing that with Linux, and left Linux wide open to SCO's stupid lawsuit. Guess what? He learned his lesson and requires a paper trail for contributions now.

Or how about another example? Remember when Linus first switched to BitKeeper? How RMS said it wasn't a good idea because he'd be left vulnerable to the whims of Larry McVoy? How did that one turn out again? Oh yeah, RMS, in his pedantic glory, was right again, Larry McVoy got shirty and revoked permission to use BitKeeper, which ended up with Linus wasting time writing his own version control toolset.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[john_sd1]

There are two types of OSS developers out there: * the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and * the RMS type "OSS is religion"

You are right. And, when it comes to legal matters, the nitpicking RMS approach wins. For example, GNU have been requiring paper trails for copyright contributions for decades. Linus didn't bother doing that with Linux, and left Linux wide open to SCO's stupid lawsuit.

Guess what? He learned his lesson and requires a paper trail for contributions now.

Nevertheless there are slightly more people using Linux than Hurd ;-) and still going on to use it despite SCO. Your argument is shallow.

If someone wants to sue he will always find a reason.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Per Abrahamsen]

> the RMS type "OSS is religion"

Religion? Would you really claim Saint IGNUcius considers free software a religion?

(He certainly don't consider "OSS" anything but a detraction.)

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[NMerriam]

How could the situation be better exposed: "people (without any merits) looking for problems". That's what they are. All developers would reject a mailing list "debian-techadvice" where clueless people could make binding technical decisions,

Yeah, inexperienced people bringing attention to potential problems! What a hoot.

Next thing you know Debian will let people report bugs in software without first completing a CS degree and providing a source diff that patches the problem! Imagine the nightmare such plebians would cause in software development...

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[killjoe]

Yes it's very important to remember that.

1) People who disagree with you are zealots. Only zealots can possibly disagree with your obviously rational and well thought out opinions.
2) People who hold other values then you are doing it because they think it's a religion. You (and the people who agree with you 100%) are the only rational people on the planet.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

All distros scratch an itch. Debian's job is to keep it pure. If they fail to do that they become just another distro in a sea of 400 and the community looses it's only 100% non-commercial major distro.

And debian practically invented the "OSS religion" btw; Debian's free software guidelines became OSI's Open Source definition.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman has never written a single line of HURD. HURD doesn't exist because of lack of interest from the community, not because of any personal failing on his part.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two types of OSS developers out there:

There are 4, the "don't illegally break other packages licences and get sued for all your worth"

and also the "don't ship export-restricted software to restricted countries and get arrested for aiding terrorism" types.

Sun's Java licence is still export controlled to some countries, but Debian is not, so just go to Iran, download Debian (legal so far), then download the non-free packages and suddenly debian is violating US export controls. I think its a bit silly, but then, I'm not going to argue with the madman who has all the guns, and the jails-that-don't-exist, and the political paranoia about terrorism.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

He could accept mplayer next to debian... It has been waiting forever in the NEW queue without anyone commenting why it can't get in. When there has been some discussion the reasons has been some moaning about mpeg4 patents, but that reason is obviously bullshit as there are many mpeg4-cabable players in debian already (xine and vlc for example).

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Cal Paterson]

You act like HURD is the only project that GNU have. Might want to check the Free Software Directory again.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Cal Paterson]

In the spirit of Debian; it's Free Software - not Open Source. ;)

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Kjella]

Great to see that the Debian developers start to break free from the strangulation of debian-legal and their overly religious OSS zealotry. It is usually debian-legal who pretends to act "in the name of the user" whereas the opposite is true and explains in large parts the success of Ubuntu.

The reason that Ubuntu has success on the desktop is that they're trying to be exactly what Debian is not - Debian on the desktop. Almost nothing about Debian is desktop-oriented... "unstable, testing, stable" "hmm, I want a stable desktop, what do I choose? stable?" "oh sorry that's old super-stable packages for 24/7 servers, use testing". The whole release cycle is based around a server OS, 18 months is too long for a desktop and there's no "point releases" matching a desktop. Being on testing is a rollercoaster with tons of changes right after a release, and glazier slow before a release.

Ubuntu is doing this perfectly correct for a desktop system - the releases match the Gnome releases, meaning every new version brings "the latest and greatest" and some new eyecandy. The last Debian stable doesn't even have a splash screen, as far as I can tell. You can't really claim it's a compatibility issue when it's set up to boot into X anyway. From what I've understood, the last Ubuntu as of breezy will also recognize my widescreen properly, something Debian does not (but I did it myself instead).

I mean, none of these are really big issues, but they've marketed themselves completely different. Plus a few cheap marketing stunts like changing from orange to brown default theme. Seriously, does it matter? It does get press, forum talk and of course a new round of screenshots though. I wonder what slashdot would say if the new "feature" of WMP11 was a new skin... Or something as trivial as comparing Debian's and Ubuntu's homepages, which looks most like a "for geeks" server OS with no pictures and a really square layout? (yes, this is a leading question)

Let me give you a typical language example:
Debian: "Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 15490 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine."
Ubuntu: "Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, (...) Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software,"

Most people wouldn't know what a "pure OS" is if you beat them with a stick, Ubuntu simply smooths over the details and says "whatever you understand by operating system, Ubuntu has it all". Debian spends a full sentence introducing the concept package, which it explains using words like "precompiled" where 99% of normal computer users who've never touched a compiler has fallen off already.

I could go on all day but there's no point. Ubuntu acts and communicates better in relation to desktop users than Debian does, and it's absolutely no surprise to me that Ubuntu is a success. Debian has this great potential but there nobody seems to be "trying", if you understand what I mean.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[KarmaMB84]

The point is Stallman is quick to point out how insignificant the Linux kernel is compared to GNU, but when it comes to producing a GNU kernel, GNU has been a resounding failure thus far.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Cal Paterson]

So, because the GNU project can't develop a kernel, their input into the discussion on ideology is worthless? Bullshit.

In producing a kernel, the GNU project has not been successful. However, they produce a large amount of the software that goes into most Linux-based distributions. Argueing the the GNU project exists just to create a kernel is illogical. No one is going to measure the success of the GNU project by their ability to create a kernel. They've spread an ideology that is very important to our communities culture. They also happen to create masses of software. There's several important pieces of software they make: the compiler, emacs, bash, coreutils, gnome and the gimp.

Considering this, the fact that they haven't managed to create a kernel is perhaps forgivable. The Linux kernel isn't of nearly the same magnitude of the GNU project. The Linux kernel is just one piece of the Operating System, and the GNU project has created most of the other pieces. I think Stallman just wants some credit for his organisation; it's not some fucking political position.

The hacker community has always been largely based on recognition for good work; he doesn't feel like the GNU project gets enough. It's a very small point in the grand scheme of things, but I am inclined to agree.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of the people on debian-legal are no lawyers at all but amidst the blind the one eyed is king - even if color blind and short sighted.

Colour blind people generally can see through camouflage better. Short-sighted people can see things close up better.

It's inadvertently a good analogy in that way.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[Anonymous Coward]

Mplayer doesn't get in because the developers has historically been pilfering code from all over the place and then releasing it under the GPL without permission from the actual authors.

Re:Great to see that the developers break free

[elhedran]

1) I agree with some people I call zealots (.e.g. I agree broadly with them, but am horrified at how much damage they do to the general argument by how far they take it.)
2) I know more Zealots I agree with than disagree with

In my book, a Zealot is someone who will keep to a cause for its core tenant while blinding themselves to any and all other factors, even at the cost of the core tenant. Think cat-caring Zealot that actually provides a poorer environment for cats by trying to save too many of them.

Religion is where people hold values not based on reason but on belief. e.g. Without references, facts, or even logic.

It has nothing to do with whether someone disagrees with you or not. Well, unless you are one :)

I

Including java without discussion was stupid

[Error27]

It's pretty obvious that discussing java's license was going to be slow and painful and so it's also obviously why people would want to short circuit the whole process. But once you think about it for 5 seconds that's a really stupid plan. People are still going to discuss it but now they're going to be more pissed off.

Also this email is stupid. Debian needs SPI and when people start suggesting otherwise that means they are taking a vacation in retardo-land.

Here's the other thing. When I heard Debian had included java into their distro, I was like, "Wow. That must be a really improved license. Debian doesn't just include any old license into the distro." But a week later, I learned that 3 debian leaders had rammed java through without any discussion and really the license was very questionable. Debian is basically going off the informal Sun FAQ when they included. Does anyone even know that the FAQ was written by a lawyer or was it written by an intern in the PR dept?

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's easy to say. From Sun's perspective though they spent more than 5 years and ridiculous amounts in legal fees trying to get an agreement that everyone was happy with. They never claimed that new the license was the end of the process, but they did say (rightly) that it was a significant step forward and that it had the support of some Linux distrots, including Debian. As someone who writes a lot of code in Java and deploys a lot of it on Linux (as well as Solaris, AIX, and even occasionally Windows), I'd be delighted if my Linux customers didn't have such a hard time installing Java since I think it holds back adoption of Linux in the datacentre.

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[Error27]

I don't think anyone is blaming Sun. It's their code, they can license it however they choose.

The question is why did the Debian leaders decide to circumvent the normal discussion? Debian doesn't owe Sun anything... Did Sun promise to make some kind of hardware donation or something? And if there was a deal like that would it make the situation better or worse?

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Sun promised some 'individual' donations?

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[drnlm]

Does anyone even know that the FAQ was written by a lawyer or was it written by an intern in the PR dept?

Yes, it was written by their lawyers, and was intended to clarify those aspects about the license the ftp-masters found troubling. Read the various posts about how java was accepted for details.

A major problem was the large disclaimer declaring the FAQ not legally binding. This appears to be a goof on the part of SUN, and the latest version clarifies this disclaimer considerably (see DLJ FAQ 1.2).

Re:Including java without discussion was stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are miss reading the FAQ. It says that the License was written by lawyers so the FAQ is supposed to clarify it. It doesn't say who wrote the FAQ.

the license only allows distribution by distros

[Anonymous Coward]

So if non-free is not a part of Debian then who ever mirrors non-free is violating the license.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Anonymous Coward]

CORRECTION: Sun do publish the source code.

Hmm, yes...

[vga_init]

...well.. I think I speak for most of us when I say, "I'm going to continue using Ubuntu."

I love Debian, and I love Free software, but sometimes a guy just wants to run Java. You know what I'm saying? I think the distribution of Java would help linux immensely, and I'm all for seeing my beloved OS reach new levels of convenience and usability. Only way to oust Windows, you know...

Re:Hmm, yes...

[Lukey Boy]

This discussion was prompted because Java is already in Debian.

Re:Hmm, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I love Debian, and I love Free software, but sometimes a
      guy just wants to run Java."

I don't get it, I run Debian stable and I have java, just had to go the sun site and download it. Which, BTW, is the exact same thing I had to do for my moms' Windows box.

Re:Hmm, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Only way to oust Windows, you know...

What's the point of ousting Windows if you have to use non-Free software to do it? You might as well just buy a Mac.

Re:Hmm, yes...

[petermgreen]

well its in unstable/non-free right now and being held out of testing by a RC bug on license issues.

I wouldn't call it in until its in testing and looking like it has a hope of staying there for the next stable release.

yur a retard

[Error27]

You have to make nice to anyone doing you a favor for free, that includes lawyers.

That's FUD

[john_sd1]

A small group of people has, it seems, in secret put Debian into a very dangerous legal position, without consulting the people who have the relevent legal expertise.

That is Microsoft-style FUD. If SUN doesn't like what Debain is doing they will simply drop them a note but certainly not sue them. Where is all the common sense gone? SUN is not Microsoft and one can talk to them. They are pretty much involved in OSS too. Ever wondered who brought openoffice to you?

And moreover there is nobody on debian-legal with any relevant legal expertise. I should maybe be renamed debian-ideolgues. It is indeed a big problem that Debian does not have any pragmatic legal expertise free of ideology that it can rely on. One has to understand that law is a non exact field of science - as opposed to source code. Software is deterministic (even race conditions are predictable), law is not. Nobody knows in advance how a court will decide.

Cheers.

Re:That's FUD

[Stephen R Hall]

That is Microsoft-style FUD. If SUN doesn't like what Debain is doing they will simply drop them a note but certainly not sue them. Where is all the common sense gone? SUN is not Microsoft and one can talk to them. They are pretty much involved in OSS too. Ever wondered who brought openoffice to you?

But Sun could become Microsoft. Sun's performance over recent years hasn't exactly been sparkling, and they could be a candidate for a takeover. If Microsoft were to buy Sun then they own Java, and they can rigidly enforce this license.

Re:That's FUD

[takeaslash]

Very few company's have the cash to take over even a depressed Sun. MS has, but I would doubt they would bother trying now they have settled the legal differences with Sun.

Buying software

[Roger W Moore]

So how many people consult their lawyer about the software license before purchasing/downloading the software? This seems to be a similar situation to me. It might have been wise to consult them but the tone of the SPI email should have been "it might be a good idea to talk to us about these sort of things since we are here to help you" and not "how dare you make a decision before you talked to us first". Lawyers are supposed to be their to help you with legal advice not to run your life for you...although it seems that many want to which is probably why so many end up in politics!

Re:Buying software

[Aladrin]

Not many people consult their lawyer before uploading MP3's to Kazaa.

Not many people consult their lawyer before robbing a bank. ... before going to the super market.

Just because people don't routinely consult a lawyer about it does not mean it is right or wrong to do. (Or legal or illegal.)

The difference here is that we aren't talking about a person, we're talking about a group. They have a responsibility to themselves and everyone that downloads Debian. That responsiblity is to make sure that everything they distribute is legal. They even have an entire department (SPI, apparently) dedicated to helping them figure these things out. They chose NOT to use that department this time, and the department told them it was wrong when they finally found out. Their 'leader' (DPL, apparently) then flew off the hook and accused the SPI of trying to take over control of the project.

When looked at this way, it's pretty simple. DPL is over-reacting and SPI is forced to over-react to protect themselves as well. They can't continue saying 'we advised Debian' if the actions Debian takes are not based on their legal advice. It's harmful to them, plain and simple.

Re:Buying software

[Kalzus]

Most people's lawyers don't end up in deep doo-doo for what their clients do in said clients' personal lives. Many company's lawyers *do* end up in deep doo-doo for what their clients do business-wise.

This situation is a business situation, not a personal situation.

Re:Buying software

[kilgortrout]

Most people are not in the business of packaging and distributing software. Those that are generally consult their attorney before distributing someone else's software subject to a questionable license if they have any assets to protect, particularly if they are a high profile player in the FOSS community.

Re:Buying software

[Roger W Moore]

Most people's lawyers don't end up in deep doo-doo for what their clients do in said clients' personal lives. Many company's lawyers *do* end up in deep doo-doo for what their clients do business-wise.

True, but that still does not mean that lawyers run the company. If they don't like it then they leave the company and go to work for someone else. They don't start telling the company that everything it wants to do MUST be approved by them first. As I said before it might be wise for the company to consult it lawyers first but it is not s requirement as SPI seemed to suggest.

NO YUO

[Anonymous Coward]

lol what

Re:fuck off, knob-end

[Anonymous Coward]

Who piddled in your Post Toasties this morning, Holmes?

Grow a sense of humour. Failing that, try going back to bed and getting up from the other side of it or something. Or just grow the fuck up already.

That's the error of this argument.

[hummassa]

SPI is Debian, not the "legal representative". Debian, as a legal entity, Does Not Exist. When aj and the ftpmasters initiated distribution of the JDK, SPI was being contracted to the indemnification clause. If there is something to indemnify, SPI will have to shell out the dollars -- or sell out Debian's server farms, domain names and other assets, including copyrights and trademarks: all assets are SPI's, not Debian's.
That's the beauty of aj's bluff: hell yeah, Debian can detach itself from SPI (after some constitution change) but, oh, it cannot be called Debian anymore (the trademark belongs to SPI), nor use the twirl mark (ah-ha), huh, and it cannot use SPI's servers and other equipment either. This would amount to the separatist cabal being exiled from Debian, really.

Re:That's the error of this argument.

[Improv]

SPI is perhaps legally Debian, but we do not think/operate strictly in the legal mode. If the "separatist cabal" includes the majority of the developers, then it's really Debian (one kind of "fiction" or group) itself splitting off from its legal fiction. There may be some consequences in order to maintain compliance with legal things, but I can't see any reason we shouldn't go on thinking of Debian as the group of people who make the software, even if that's not the legal arrangement.

Unrelated, it would've been a very good idea for Debian to talk to SPI a bit more on these issues, given that they have a kind of symbiotic relationship.

Re:That's the error of this argument.

[Jason Earl]

I've witnessed my share of Free Software projects that fork over control issues, and it is never a pretty sight. Most projects never really recover. A fork of Debian would be especially problematic because quite a few Debian developers are the sort of license purists that would remove GFDL documentation from the distribution because it isn't free enough. So a splinter-Debian would not only have to come up with new infrastructure, a new name, new ftp sites, and all of the rest of the stuff that makes Debian GNU/Linux work, but it would also have to convince enough developers that the new splinter-Debian is the new "real" Debian.

Quite frankly, I lurk on the debian-devel and debian-legal lists and I don't think that there are enough people that care enough about including Sun's Java in non-free to make that happen. I think that it would be possible to create yet another splinter of Debian (a la Ubuntu) that borrows heavily from Debian and includes a few extra packages, but I would be very surprised if a splinter would ever become more than just another package repository that tracked stable and testing.

bend you, twat-face

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you just get a big stick of dynamite and blast your worthless fatty body out of my plane of existence? right now. just get out of my plane of existence. go overreact to incredibly shitty jokes somewhere else. you give me AIDS. you wouldn't bother puking out this diseased crap unless you felt that you were the holy king of the tide.

just explode yourself now. you worthless piece of shit, you bring a bad taste to my entire fucking ocean. people like you give overreacting a bad name. you have officially shattered my hopes and dreams into a million pieces and slaughtered my family.

Three week flame war?

[Kithraya]

A three week public flame war? Incidents like this are why I have a hard time selling Linux as something other than a "high school kid" operating system. Regardless of the reasons behind it, there are much better ways to handle it than a flame war, let alone one that lasts three weeks.

Re:Three week flame war?

[Anonymous Coward]

pfft. no different than "corporate America", except the suits have to throw chairs (or subpoenas) before anyone gets to hear about the flamewars.

Re:Three week flame war?

[big dumb dog]

I agree with you, a public flame war is juvenile. However, these types of things are not limited to Linux or other OS projects.

If it helps, simply point to Microsoft's recent issues with Symantec or Adobe as evidence.

Re:Three week flame war?

[ClamIAm]

A three week public flame war? Incidents like this are why I have a hard time selling democracy as something other than a "high school utopia" system of government. Regardless of the reasons behind it, there are much better ways to handle it than public debate, let alone one that lasts three weeks.

Re:Three week flame war?

[bucky0]

That's true, but then again, do you think that Microsoft doesn't have these sorts of discussions in their internal memos? Only difference is, debian's stuff is all out in the open.

A very good question

[Anonymous Coward]

The upcoming Ubuntu distribution is threatening to replace Debian as the leading distribution.
Er, leading distribution of what ?

A very good question, my good doctor. They are referring to Linux distributions. From that article:

Linux was invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.

There's a riot in the bazaar!

[linvir]

There's a riot in the bazaar!
Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral!

Re:There's a riot in the bazaar!

[Compaq_Hater]

yeah, and hope Sun doe's not lay seige to the cathedral and burn all or us heritics.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Tim C]

But Sun doesn't even publish source

That's FUD, pure and simple - the source is available for download right on the same page as the rest of the JDK download links. You have to agree to one of two licences and have a (free) Sun Download Center account to get it, but it *is* available.

Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

This was bound to happen. Here you have a new guy at the steering wheel who has just become the head honcho of the GNU/Debian Linux project. So what is more important here? The wellfare of Debian as a whole or your building reputation as "the head honcho of...". This is just your regular bobo (IMO ofcourse) trying to make a name for himself while basicly ignoring the issues which are very relevant to Debian.

Here I see someone who is only doing the numbers without even caring what is being said and where things are going. "> SPI projects shouldn't be taking advice from Sun's attorneys.", puhlease... Ever heard of keeping an open mind? Or, if you wish to take it on the "Sun is our lesser Microsoft like evil empire" kind of approach the ancient old saying: "Know thy enemy". When the SCO issue was going on people also didn't go "We're not taking advice from SCO" because that is just the narrow minded kind of approach which will only get you into trouble. No, instead you hear them out, make them speak up their mind and then, and only then, will you start taking action based on the things they said.

But like I said; this crap was bound to happen. Debian has always been a distribution which keeps strict standards, so how does one make a better name for himself? Simple; take the whole issue one level upwards so people can say "Whoah, he's really protecting Debian's standards.". The next generation of people aren't always as great as the first, especially when their main goal isn't to help and push a certain project forward but has shifted to become part of that project due to its reputation and fame.

Well, the way I see it is simple: its not the rules, the policies, the lawyers, the software, etc. which is what makes Debian great. Its the people who show commitment every single day to keep Debian as great as it is. But sadly people like yourself don't wish to see this and only hammer on rules and policies, even if this means insulting and by-passing people who have been in their seat far longer than you have. It would really show of good leadership to make use of these people's expertise.

And during these times I have to say that Ubuntu begins to look very appealing.

Re:Inevitable

[krmt]

But like I said; this crap was bound to happen. Debian has always been a distribution which keeps strict standards, so how does one make a better name for himself? Simple; take the whole issue one level upwards so people can say "Whoah, he's really protecting Debian's standards."

Reading the article may prove useful in the future before writing diatribes that are the complete opposite of reality.

Re:Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a little less narrow minded approach and also pay attention to what has been said in this /. thread. Some people immediatly were very enthousiast when Java appeared inside the repository. "Wow, they've done it. An agreement is reached. Great work!", was the reaction of some. Gee, who pushed the JRE / JDK into the repository again ?

Well that explains that.

[mpcooke3]

I had wondered how debian could possibly agree to include that software in non-free with those license conditions.

see: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186539&c id=15398000

I guess they "forgot" to check with the lawyers...

Re:Well that explains that.

[takeaslash]

Easy. If you call it java, then it better be java. If you want to build something which looks similar, does similar things, then just dont call it Java. Simple! I think users (and Sun) would be upset if they ran something called java, and it wasn't.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[ajs318]

You can publish patches to the source code for Pine. You can publish modified binaries for Pine as long as you take them outside the UW versioning scheme so they don't get mistaken for actual UW products.

Gentoo and the BSDs, with their source-based ports systems, can all include Pine natively; since patching and compilation are done on the end user's computer. Debian could {by adding depends: for the complete development toolchain, and patching and compiling the source during preinstall}, but won't because it would seriously break the way their packaging system works {depends: is meant to be about running the package, not the preinstall phase, and mucking about with the toolchain shouldn't affect what's already been compiled}.

I personally don't have a problem with the Pine licence. And UW are currently happy about people downloading, compiling and using Pine; they're just too damn stubborn to solve everybody's problems in one fell swoop by switching to the GPL for PINE v5. But I can see why Debian are erring on the side of caution -- what will happen if some new top brass take over at UW, decide to make Pine a closed-source, commercial project, and begin vigorously pursuing past excesses of authority by software distributors?

Not nerve, naivite

[hey!]

I think the other point of view is that Debian isn't a legal entity, it's just a bunch of cooperating people, and SPI exists to handle some formalities like owning servers and whatnot.

There seems to be an assumption that being amorphous, legally speaking, is some kind of shield. It's not. It's an invitation to drop the shit-bomb and cover everybody in sight. The way this works is that when the legal successors to Sun in owneship of Java (see below) have a legal hissy fit, their lawyers sue everybody in sight. The the judge dismisses the suits against every tom dick and harry and makes them go after the legal entity, unless somebody has made a very bad mistake. That's why corporations exist. They're the equivalent of legal fortesses for the individuals in an enterprise.

What should happen then is if SPI wins, great, if it loses, the individuals can continue on under a new corporation because of the open source licenses. The problem is that this is very close to legal chicanery. You're not supposed to protect yourself with legal fictions. Thus for the protection to work, people have to cooperate -- which sometimes means not doing what they want right away. If they don't then they expose everybody directly involved with the project, and everybody transitively involved for good measure. That's what lawyers do when they're looking to make money for their clients: they throw shit on everything and see what is allowed to stick. Even if it doesn't stick, it's an unpleasant experience.

Success in any enterprise depends on predicting the future, which is a dicey proposition at best. The main reason you need to consult lawyers is to avoid what other people's lawyers will do to you if your prediction turns out false.

In this case, take Sun. They are not doing so well as a business for the last several years. They're losing money. Let's hope they'll turn it around. But one thing that happens if this keeps going is that the stockholders decide they'd better cash out; the large stockholders can't do this because they own too much. So they start looking at selling the whole company, or liquidating its assets to turn them into cash. Java is currently the property of Sun. Next year it could be the legal property of another company, and one thing that company buys is the right to sue over uses of that property.

Now imagine a company that has a lot of cash that would have a strategic interest in gaining a hold over Java licensees. It's not hard. Imagine what they could do with their power to sue licensees and copyright infringers, not just for the immediate cash value but for the strategic value. Are they going to be reaonable and just go after the ftp maintainers?

I've been through this kind of thing before. Without consulting me, my business associate, who had a majority interest, entered into a casual legal relationship with an outside party. The arrangment seems reasonable and we're all reasonable likable folks. Then the outside party got into some trouble of his own not related to us at all. Suddenly he becomes less reasonable and likable. Next thing his lawyers were suing everybody in sight. We are getting hit with lawsuits from people we have no relationship with, who are really going after him, but since their lawyer's already working on the case the marginal cost of a second third and fourth lawsuit is nil. At that point I was very glad to have a corporation between me and them to take the liability.

Re:Not nerve, naivite

[myowntrueself]

You're not supposed to protect yourself with legal fictions.

Like the notion of 'intellectual property' for example...

Re:Not nerve, naivite

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the f4 do they keep letting you idiots on the internet?

No, you f4ing idiot. Your not supposed to setup shell companies with the sole and only purpose of protecting you from the consequences of your actions.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it possible to articulate an entire thought, enough to get you, an AC, a 5 rating, and yet, somehow, you misspell a simple word like "fulfill"/"fulfil".

I mean, come on, "fuffill"? What the hell is that.

Mark me as troll if you must, but for Pete's sake people, learn to spell basic words.

Anthony Towns not suited for his position

[Anonymous Coward]

Anthony Towns is not suited for his position. It is obvious SPI should have been consulted on this matter. Java is flagship product by an industry heavyweight and Debian is a Linux cornerstone. You do not play fast and loose with this and then finish up by shooting from the lip as Tony Toons has done. As such, Anthony Towns presents more risk to Debian than Debian should be willing to accept and Towns should be demoted immediately at a minimum. Obviously he still needs training wheels which is not acceptable given his current position. Moreover, if the reasoning and reactions of Anthony Towns represents the current state of Debian brain trust then Debian is in trouble.

It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of sync

[Pecisk]

Let's be honest - most developers don't give a white sh@$#%t about what clauses and doubtful legal situations can arise of use of software, so Debian-legal thoughts are usually have been taken with lot of anger and confusion. Devs just want to work with software and apps, but D-L is full of idealists and clever individuals in legal field, who see things quite differently (and it is NOTHING bad about that), and so conflict is in full force.

But in this case, I *think* it is totally overblown and feels like that Debian-legal just want to say big f12#$%k off to Java usage in Debian - non-legal arguments like "I don't use non-free", "there are ALMOST working free software implementation in main", etc says almost everything about discusssion - it is not about LEGAL situation, but about fears that if Java will be aviable in non-free and will be supported by DD, CLASSPATH and other Java projects will slowly loose momentum they achieved so far now (Again, it is just my thougts after reading almost half of thread).

I can understand both sides, but thinking "We will get free implementation, we don't need stinkin Sun official implementation" sounds like too much dreaming. Let's be honest - it is simply not possible. Oracle won't use CLASSPATH, they will insist to use JRE. Other software will too. Yes, there will be desktop apps which will run on Free Software versions just fine - like Eclipse, lot of different small aps, but for enterprise it will be big NO-NO.

god told him that he didnt need to consult spi

[Anonymous Coward]

he went with his gut feeling. he is sure that history will judge him in a positive light. and the javais will enjoy freedom and democracy

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't worked with Pine source code. Mark Crispin apparently deliberately writes updates to Pine and the UW Imap package using the same libraries to break patches he doesn't like, such as patches to keep the server from treating every file in someone's home directory as an mbox file for IMAP, or years ago with the SSL patches published when UWash refused to publish their SSL-enabled version. Then they started threatening ths SSL patch authors with copyright violation, without ever actually looking at their code. (It turned out upon examination, a year later, to very definitely not be UWash code: the published patches weren't very good, but they worked.)

I know, I was involved in providing source patches for both, and the rewrites of the code between minor releases served absolutely no purpose but to break the patches. You can't hope to maintain patches in that hostile environment with the author, and you can't fork it. Mark has proven he's happy to use the copyright to interfere with packagers doing things he doesn't like: you should ask his ex-wife about how much worse he can get in person.

am i missing something...

[lon3st4r]

... or is GNU/Debian || Debian/GNU out of fashion nowadays!? :P

* lon3st4r *

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, I was missing it on the download page. Thank you for the correction. The conditions under which they publish it are still pretty difficult to work with: getting that "Download Center" account involves giving your home address, phone number, real name, and email account, all all required. But as near as I can tell, you can't easily bundle it into a DEB or RPM with those licensing restrictuions without some serious risk of violating Sun's licensing, for reasons that are pretty obvious if you look at the rest of the Debian history.

Whether one can compile what Sun actually publishes from that source is something I'll have XÀDðest.

Appropriate response is

[obnoxiousbastard]

See ya, close the door on the way out.

My favorite redundancy

[twitter]

Ho hum, redundancy in a summary blurb. How about mindless and meaningless redundancy in a world wide advertising campaign?

M$ spent millions of dollars telling people that Windoze 2000 and XP were "based on NT Technology". NT itself stood for "Net Technology", making XP into a Technology Technology. What does it do? We don't know!

Re:My favorite redundancy

[jdgeorge]

NT itself stood for "Net Technology"

I think you are a bit confused. At the time NT was release, most people didn't really know what a network was. My recollection was that NT stood for "New Technology". There are various other explanations for the NT designation, of course, some of which do not result in the redundant "technology"; see this article in Wikipedia for details.

Re:My favorite redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

We're sorry this funny comment angers you. Is this the extent of your capability to contribute to the discussion? Another "M$" and "Windoze" non sequitur insulting flame? This is the only comment in the entire thread that even remotely mentions Microsoft. And for what?

How sad.

Re:My favorite redundancy

[MechaStreisand]

But even better than that are all those ads you hear on the radio now for High Definition HD radio. It makes me cringe every time I hear it: how can they not realize what they're saying and how stupid it makes them sound?

The cathedral is full of assholes.

[twitter]

There's a riot in the bazaar! Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral!

And there you will find the ass that tried to start a riot. I can do without Java and all the bull shit that goes along with it, thanks.

Re:The cathedral is full of assholes.

[Anonymous Coward]

take yer politics and blow em out of your asshole. this is joke time, or else.

Re:The cathedral is full of assholes.

[johnMG]

> > There's a riot in the bazaar! Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral!
>
> And there you will find the ass that tried to start a riot. I can do
> without Java and all the bull shit that goes along with it, thanks.

Actually, if you like, you can have Java *without* the BS: just install
GCJ.

Re:The cathedral is full of assholes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do without Java

Well then I guess everyone else should as well, right? I mean, if you don't see any inherent value in the Java platform then that by definition must actually eliminate anything of value in it.

I love comments like these. Thanks for sharing.

Re:It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of syn

[Svartalf]

Here's a hint:

      A lawyer should be consulted on a license- NOT a developer. It's a legal matter, not a coding matter.

There's a legal gotcha on the Java license that SPI, being the legal interface for the Debian
project, that if things go wrong, they'd have to absorb and deal with. Without SPI, each of
the devs involved with the project would be held individually liable for potentially millions
of dollars each (And that is exactly what is possible with the new licensing from Sun on Java).

Do you now see WHY devs shouldn't be the final call on a license?

OT quoting

[Random832]

how do you get the fancy quote markers - looks a lot better than just italics

Re:OT quoting

[nacturation]

how do you get the fancy quote markers - looks a lot better than just italics

I believe that the use of the blockquote tag does this. Tested: yep!

Re:OT quoting

[Raphael]

how do you get the fancy quote markers - looks a lot better than just italics

Both <blockquote>...</blockquote> (for normal quotes) and <ecode>...</ecode> (for pre-formatted code) will do that for you

Re:OT quoting

[zsau]

I believe that the use of the blockquote tag does this. Tested: yep!

• /. is getting all funny nowadays.
• I think I've seen some posts that have weird bullets in them
• Basically, the first bullet is appearing like the arrow that shows the first post that's a child of the parent
• And all subsequent bullets are just ommited.
• Obviously the new theme isn't as good as all that.

1. Though numbers are fine (albeit perhaps too far to the list to be æsthetically pleasing).
2. So maybe we do this instead?
3. Does anyone know where we can submit bug reports about the new theme? It just miraculously appeared one day when I wasn't looking.
4. I do wish /. would make the old look available as an option in the View/Styles menu on my browser, or as a preference or something.

Re:OT quoting

[drinkypoo]

Yes, it's the blockquote tag, and it's horribly annoying. Blockquote is the only means we have to perform an indent. If I want to quote something from an article, I use blockquote; If I want to quote something from a comment, I use blockquote and subject the text to <em>phasis. Now, all of the above looks like I'm quoting a comment because of the blockquote style. This is stupid.

In fact, here's an example, from a w3c document telling us what the tag is FOR:

These two elements designate quoted text. BLOCKQUOTE is for long quotations (block-level content) and Q is intended for short quotations (inline content) that don't require paragraph breaks.

Neither one is intended explicitly for quoting text, response by response. Slashdot should create a new tag and convert it to <blockquote class=quoted> or something. Subverting HTML is dumb.

Re:OT quoting

[Raphael]

Does anyone know where we can submit bug reports about the new theme?

You should submit them to the Sourceforge bug tracker for the slashcode project.

But I have just done it for you: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=deta il&aid=1502349&group_id=4421&atid=104421

Here is another test of <ul> and <ol>, in case anyone looks at this...

• This is a <li> inside <ul>.
• This is another one.
• We should see bullets or some other decoration in front of each item.
• There should be no gray lines or arrow in front of the first item.

1. This is a <li> inside <ol>.
2. This is another one.
3. It should be intented exactly as the previous list.
4. There should be no negative indent (compared to other paragraphs).
5. And there should be a normal margin (one blank line) between this item and the next paragraph.

As I explained in the bug report, it should not be too hard to fix this problem by resetting the definition of the list elements when they are used inside div.commentBody.

1. Just for fun, here is a <li> inside <ol> inside <blockquote>
2. • And a <li> inside <ul> inside that list.
   • And a second <li> inside that nested list.
3. Back to the <li> inside <ol>.

End of the blockquote.

Re:OT quoting

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Slashdot is doing the right thing: <blockquote> is for long quotations and it is definitely a good idea to mark these quotes with a gray bar or anything else that separates them from the rest of the text.

However, it is currently impossible to use <em> inside <blockquote> due to the following rule in comments.css:

div.commentBody blockquote * { font-style: normal; }

I do not know why this rule is there, but it should probably be removed. I like to be able to use <blockquote> with or without <em> (or <i> or <strong> or <b>).

By the way, you can also try the <ecode> tag for the same effect, but with fixed formatting.

Re:OT quoting

[Knuckles]

How did you do the angled line after the blockquote and before "/."?

Re:OT quoting

[Knuckles]

Yeah, sorry, got it.

Re:OT quoting

[spectre_240sx]

I seen nothing wrong with how Slashdot is handling it. Quoting text response by response is going to fit in one of those two tags depending upon how much text you're quoting.

Re:OT quoting

[zsau]

Yes, that's the bug I was discussing. All I did was a normal HTML unordered list, and that's what I got.

Re:OT quoting

[nacturation]

If your line items are appearing too far to the left, it may be because you're not using proper HTML. I've seen a lot of people use

Re:OT quoting

[zsau]

You are wrong; I don't think you can get numbers by just writing:

this is wrong

maybe it's numbered

But probably it isn't (it wasn't—not even bulleted!).

(I'm slightly offended at being accused of writing improper HTML without actually having done it, which is why I might be a little curt in this reply. But I know you didn't intend to offend me, so I'm trying not to be ;)

(Interestingly, I wonder if ul+ol+li formats an ordered list nicely until Slashdot fix their html: lets see.

• 1. is this indented well?
  2. is it numbered alone?
  3. it's certainly an abuse of html, regardless!

(It appears reasonably, still slightly odd; no point in using it.)

Re:OT quoting

[nacturation]

I started out by saying your HTML blew more chunks than a Chunks Ahoy cookie, but then toned it down. Long day at the office... but I've seen the too-far-left list items before Slashdot used CSS and, if memory serves, the HTML for those posts contained just

Re:OT quoting

[zsau]

Yeah, well that arrow was because I was abusing HTML and doing a UL with an OL inside it; at the time I thinke a UL added the arrow thingy. Seems by now the style sheet's changed.

Re:OT quoting

[zsau]

Wow! It works now, a little. Thanks for submitting the bug report for me... Now we've just got superfluous bullets, but at least it's readable :)

Re:fuck off, knob-end

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea: why don't you just pass by posts you disagree with or don't find funny, and let everyone else who finds a shed of humor in it chuckle? I'll bet you're one of those users who wastes mod points modding everyone down rather than modding really great posts up.

Re:It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of syn

[Pecisk]

I don't want to stand in either side in this discussion - I don't use Java and I would be happy that world would go with Python, which is more portable and that stuff - but let's be real, Java is used heavily in enterprise and that is where Debian is aimed at and it would be very good, because hey, we are not here to make enemies, but friends :)

So what I want is clearly compromise solution, not flamewar. Problem is here that SPI and Debian-legal are in clear opposition in ANY deal with current Sun attitude. They want clear hands and not even vague hint about legal problems but there is no such possibilty, because we are living in real world, with real, different people with different goals. And legal world is fucked up that there can be any treat from anyone, so if you want to avoid that, better go to the wild and live in the tent.

And my pick is that you are not reading your own hint quite right. Lawyer should be "consulted". There are words "should" and "consulted", not "must" and "decide".

Let's be honest in what we believe. It is good that we have FSF, Debian-legal, and lot of clever minds who wants to avoid legal trouble. But in same time - let's be in touch with real world and real issues. Lot of Debian users - even faitful ones - wants to have easy instable and supported Java. No editing sources.list, no obscure packages, reading mailing lists, howtos... It is a fact. And nothing will change it.

Java Licenses -- my opinion

[rdebath]

I'm not particularly interested in Java, to me it was a pain to setup and use, even with msjava, and now it looks like an "also ran". Python, Perl, Ruby, lua and javascript are higher up the list.

But prompted by this I've just had a look at those licenses and the FAQ.

Scheesh, what a mess, I very quickly got bored with Suns verbiage, my feelings can be summed up in two words.

Fuck them!

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Anonymous Coward]

This has happenned before with other software. Sun's license is shit and should be avoided by any sort of sane Linux distribution.

I run Java every day and, generally, consider it to be an excellent development tool but I have to agree with your sentiment.

Your attorney does not control you.

[Distan]

Maybe (probably) I'm missing some subtlety specific to Debian/SPI, but when I compare this situation to what I encounter in my professional life, it appears that SPI is in the wrong.

I work for a corporation. In my position, I frequently negotiate deals with software vendors, and this includes negotiating the contract terms. I am not a lawyer, however, so I work with our corporate attorneys in negotiating these contracts. They are responsible for understanding and explaining the legal ramifications of the contract terms, and I am responsible for understanding and explaining the business objectives of why we are trying to license the software.

Indemnification in particular is often a sticky subject in these negotiations. We usually get the indemnification clause that makes our lawyers happy, but in rare cases we do not.

In the end, however, it is notthe lawyer's job to decide whether or not we accept the terms of any contract. It is their job to advise me (and my managers) what risk we are taking with any given contract. It is then up to management to decide of that risk outweighs the business benefits we are trying to seek.

If somehow the Debian developers have gotten themselves in the position of needing permission from their attorney to sign a contract, then something has gotten seriously screwed up in their relationship. That would be like the CEO of McDonalds needing permission from some random fry cook to enter into a legal agreement. The attorney is to be an advisor, not a decision maker.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[James McP]

Debian is a *project* not an entity or person. Projects cannot be held legally accountable or own things.

SPI is not a legal firm full of lawyers. SPI is a corporation that provides the legal entity that can own property & purchase services for the Debian developers. SPI is the entity that OWNS the name "Debian", the servers the files are hosted on, and that contracts the attorneys that protect Debian developers. (Without knowing the twisty history, I wouldn't be surprised if Debian wasn't the project that caused SPI to be created.)

In human terms, SPI is Debian's legal guardian. SPI is legally responsible for Debian's debts, obligations, and will be the one against the wall if Debian does something bad. However Debian admins can agree to legal terms and contracts which put SPI on the spot.

I quote one of the posts: SPI projects shouldn't be taking advice from Sun's attorneys. We should be taking advice from SPI's attorneys.

In other words: "don't take legal advice from the attorneys who may be suing you tomorrow, especially when those attorneys may be suing you, me, and two dozen other people in the process."

Darn good advice.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[honkycat]

In human terms, SPI is Debian's legal guardian. SPI is legally responsible for Debian's debts, obligations, and will be the one against the wall if Debian does something bad. However Debian admins can agree to legal terms and contracts which put SPI on the spot.

It seemed to me from the discussion that it's not clear whether the Debian admins actually have the power to enter such agreements or not. I'm not disagreeing with your post, just clarifying that. As the SPI rep pointed out, whether or not the Debian admins actually have that power, they can create a nasty situation. If they do have the power, then SPI has unwittingly accepted the indemnification terms. If they do not, then distributing the software is illegal. His point (or one of them) is that the way around this is to let SPI in on the decision.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[Anonymous Coward]

If somehow the Debian developers have gotten themselves in the position of needing permission from their attorney to sign a contract, then something has gotten seriously screwed up in their relationship. That would be like the CEO of McDonalds needing permission from some random fry cook to enter into a legal agreement. The attorney is to be an advisor, not a decision maker.

WOW! what an immature power tripper this techno-child is! uh, mr immature, i have news for you... mcdonald's CEO checks with his attorney before he sneezes in a burger king. then again, that CEO knows what he's doing.

the legal team is there to help you. only a blow hard, arrogant, immature, unsophisticated runt would reject sound legal counsel in legal matters.

if you get sued for all your worth plus a couple million, i will have a hard time feeling bad about it.

you don't know this, beign naive all and all, but you are at the mercy of soemone's word, not the law. what happens when that person moves on and another person moves in? perhaps your lawyer could've informed you of this scenario if you had consulted him/her.

grow up!

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[James McP]

Yeah, you're right. A Debian admin can agree to legal terms but whether or not they do so as "Joe Coder" or "Joe Coder, duly authorized representative of Debian/SPI" is not clear. Since it isn't clear, SPI is dragged in regardless which way it turns out to be.

Really this breaks down to Townes not understanding where his project authority overlaps with his personal and SPI's corporate legal liability. Townes' actions impact a very wide circle of people, could bankrupt SPI/Debian and/or result in someone spending jail time (unlikely but possible if he continues to willfully ignore legal council in legal matters like copyright & licensing. Violating the DMCA & Patriot Act could be easier than he knows).

In a way, you could say Debian and SPI are married. What one does has an impact on the other. SPI shouldn't meddle too much in Debian's internal activities but Debian needs to not buy 5,000 acres of swampland in Florida.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[Anonymous Coward]

That must be the subtlety I don't grok - the legal relationship between the project and the SPI.

If SPI is the only legal entity here, and the coder does not have the authority to enter agreements for SPI, then whatever he agreed to is nonbinding (or binding only upon him).

If the coder *does* have the authority to enter these agreements, then he can always choose to do so over the advise of the SPI attorneys.

I did track down and read the SPI web pages, but they don't have the level of detail I would need to understand exactly what the relationship is.

Re:Your attorney does not control you.

[James McP]

That's the point; it is a very subtle distinction. Only a lawyer can say with any certainty whether the liability is SPI's and/or that of the specific FTP-master. Since no one asked a lawyer, no one can be sure who is liable.

I'll point out that, as a non-lawyer who could be on a jury, if the ftp-masters have always approved licenses as standard operating procedures for the Debian project (a project "owned" by SPI) then it could easily be seen that the ftp-masters have been granted the authority by the project and thus SPI.

This is a case where "we've always done it that way" and "what the law says you should do" might be at odds. I wouldn't expect coders to be legal experts any more than I'd expect a lawyer to hack machine code. I would, however, expect a coder to be aware of their ignorance in legal matters just as much as I would a lawyer be aware of their coding limitations. When Debian has legal experts on retainer, via SPI, it starts becoming willfull ignorance of the law.

As a potential juror I might show lenience to someone who can't afford a lawyer and did the best they could but if you can call a lawyer whenever you want and you REFUSE to do so, I guarantee I would vote to bring down the mjolnir of law-hammers.

stupid speling trol

[Anonymous Coward]

I never knew "fulfil" is an acceptable alternate spelling of fulfill, but I've never seen it before.

The net agrees: "fulfil" is a very obscure alternate spelling of "fulfill".

What's this about learning to spell?

Java's been available since September 2004

[edbarrett]

feb@murgatroyd:~$ aptitude show java-package
Package: java-package
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 0.24
Priority: optional
Section: contrib/misc
Maintainer: Debian Java Maintainers <pkg-java-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Un compressed Size: 270k
Depends: debhelper, fakeroot, coreutils | stat
Description: utility for building Java(TM) 2 related Debian packages
This package provides the capability to create a debian package from a
Java(TM) 2 distribution by just running make-jpkg <filename>.

This program currently works with the following Java(TM) 2 Runtime
Environments and Development Kits:

* Sun Microsystems(TM) 1.4 and 1.5 Standard Edition
* IBM(TM) 1.3 and 1.4 Standard Edition
* Blackdown Java-Linux 1.3 and 1.4 Standard Edition

How is having Java in non-free any better than a wrapper package that installs Java for you?

Re:Java's been available since September 2004

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) You don't have to manually download the release and manually build the package.
2.) Automatic upgrades with the rest of your system.

Re:Java's been available since September 2004

[aric4ever]

> How is having Java in non-free any better than a wrapper package that installs Java for you?

It would be because, in my current understanding, with a wrapper the user would be individually agreeing to the licenses present in the program, rather than the distro explicitly or impliticitly doing it for them. IANAL though.

Sissies! ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

First you welcome the arrival of the new Debian overlord and now that he starts acting like one people cry out about ;)

exlaining why I said zealotry

[john_sd1]

Actually Debian's idea of purity is one of its strong points. The idea of sharing and cooperation, of neighborly help, community, volunteer work and some sort of altruism and spreading these ideas and showing their advantages.

In order to spread these ideas a project must be somewhat successful and Debian is losing more and more grounds here. The users are running over to Ubuntu and the developers are alienated - to check the last point you may follow the links in my OP and check who Joey Hess, Bruce Momsen and Tom Lane are.

Definition from wikipedia:

In modern English it is used to refer to any form of zeal in excess, especially to cases where activism and ambition in relation to an ideology have become excessive to the point of being harmful to others, oneself, and one's own cause.

Debian gets more and more trapped in nit picking discussions about GPL, LGPL, GFDL etc. which outside of the OSS world nobody can follow und thus losing users and developers.

Go back in american history and ask yourself if the concepts of helping each other, sharing and cooperating have been invented by RMS.

Removing support for postgres because that indirectly links to OpenSSL simply is zealotry. It harms the users and is an ivory tower discussion you can't possibly explain to an average human being.

Re:It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of syn

[Svartalf]

The didn't consult their lawyers, they consulted the lawyers of the people they're entering into an agreement with- a formula for disaster. That's what the brouhaha is all about. That's what Debian-legal isn't happy about this- the developers did something that nobody in their right minds would do under any other circumstances. They went and listend to the advice of "opposing" counsel on a contract- the side making the agreement.

If you think this is a good idea, you might want to talk with my lawyer on a contract that I'm going to bind you to. Be more than happy to give you access to him, even- just don't be pissed off at me when I've screwed you out of a lot of time and possibly money.

sometimes zealots are just zealots

[wilsynet]

really. and not because i disagree with them, but because they are -- the truth is not always in the middle.

Yeah, flamewar so bad compared to Microsoft's

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian has a flamewar over a license.

Microsoft said Vista will be out by end of 2006. Now it will be out by Q1-Q2 2007. Lots of people got sacked.

So, MS OS is mature because they throw out people (left for better oppotunities) for not delivering on some deadline, but Debian is a "high school kid OS" because they have a flamewar (lively discussion, to be politically correct) about a license.

I guess we'll see next week why Taliban is a better gov't than UK's constitutional monarchy, because in UK they have flamewars in politics. Give me break man.

Debian - a dysfunctional organization

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think this issue came up because of of Debian's so-called dilligent pursuit of legal correctness.
No. This is issue comes up because Debian as an organization is sick and by and large an incompetent body that has all sorts of problem taking their tasks forward. Once again, instead of getting work done, the dysfunctional nature of the Debian organization raises its ugly head.

*sniff*

[krewemaynard]

Mmmm, nothing like a good dose of smug. I wonder if Towns farts in a glass or if he just takes a straight shot.

Goerzen shares the blame

[alienmole]

Regardless of whether he's right, Goerzen made it a control issue when he wrote:

> I am becoming increasingly concerned at the unilateral method in which
> you and/or the archive maintainers have taken this decision.
>
> The ability to enter into a legal contract to indemnify a third party
> should be, and arguably IS, reserved solely for the SPI Board of
> Directors.

It seems that part of the problem, at least, is that Towns may not fully understand the nature of the Debian/SPI relationship. Goerzen could have been much more diplomatic about it, but the way he put it, he highlights the control issue in an extreme way, i.e. essentially saying "you have no authority to do what you're doing". Regardless of whether that's true, Goerzen could be more diplomatic about it. In fact, he has an obligation to be more diplomatic about it, as President and Chairman of SPI, in the interests of serving the organizations which SPI exists to serve.

Lucene works fine on gcj

[Anonymous Coward]

Good enough for Wikipedia, actually: http://www.spindazzle.org/green/index.php?p=48

Obligatory "Jealous much?"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just jealous because you didn't get FRWMF (First Reply to Whiney Mac Fanboy), so you could tell that to him directly.

three-week flame war in a debian mailing list? say

[OrangeTide]

Oh it's the same way at tech companies. We just don't have our emails up for everyone on the internet to see. Open source projects tend to air their dirty laundry out where everyone can see.

But honestly, I think few people who would "buy" Linux even know what Debian is, let along would have seen any of this on Slashdot.

Ubuntu is just as good (it's the same) and they don't have flamewars (that I'm aware of). Also, Debian doesn't represent all of Linux and GNU. Just like Red Hat doesn't represent all of Linux and GNU. It's really tough for people to understand that Linux, as an OS, is actually a bunch of little indepedent projects all stitched together by a distro maker.

Alternatives:

[jd]

Flamware might also be stuff made in the Flam fjord or a type of drum rudiment. Either of these would fit the discussion very nicely. Of course, the Real Ultimate Power version of flamware would be software where the license requires harsh criticism by means of sending flam-filled music bought in Flam.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Rich0]

Whether the license allows free distribution is under debate.

It would appear to prohibit distribution along with the GNU java classes, for example.

It also seems to require indemnification from 3rd-party lawsuits - which is a potentially expensive license term (ie MS downloads java from debian, finds a legal issue, sues Sun, sun asks Debian to take care of the suit for them).

easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

stop distributing java! its a blight on society anyway.

Other school Kid Operating Systems

[Ada_Rules]

A three week public flame war? Incidents like this are why I have a hard time selling Linux as something other than a "high school kid" operating system. Regardless of the reasons behind it, there are much better ways to handle it than a flame war, let alone one that lasts three weeks.

Three weeks of a public flame war? That is terrible. Wind River and Greenhills were able to keep a public flamewar (e.g. http://www.us.design-reuse.com/news/news9493.html) for at least a year. Linux apparently has a long way to go before they can be considered one of the big boys if they are able to solve complex license related issues in only three weeks. You are supposed to drag these things on or how can we feed the children of the lawyers.

Guess what? Nobody cares!!!

[swordgeek]

Y'know what? It's true. Nobody really gives a shit about legal wranglings between companies, until it affects the software they get at home. Most of the time, even that won't stir people out of their chairs.

It's just not that big of a deal for 99+% of the population.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Antique Geekmeister]

So I went and took a look at the source. If Sun is successfully compiling from that mass of broken Makefiles and poorly written shell madness, they're braver and considerably luckier than I am. I have to assume that there are compilation tricks they're simply not including in that source bundle, based on failure to compile on 3 different OS's in a row.

Note especially that the RPM and similar packages are not compiled from source: they're typically installation wrappers around the Sun-published binaries, I assume because actually compiling it from the published source is so very painful and difficult. Has anyone actually compiled the SDK from the source code on a Linux system, other than Sun? I'd love to see your configuration and especially what compiler you got it to work with.

Re:Debian is violating Sun's licensing is the issu

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously (in My eyes) Sun chooses this for two reasons:
A. To keep it's java runtime pure and functional. Avoids bug-inducing conflicts.
B. Help kill off Free software java implimentation.


what about

C. Prevent Microsoft from forking Java

Re:It feels that DD and Debian-legal is out of syn

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading the thread, not your prejudices!

"I don't use non-free" and "there are ALMOST working free software implementation in main" were not arguments against Java's licence. They were reasons given by some developers for not working on/worrying about this too much, along with the decision being improperly made, so it is the maintainers in legal peril if the shit hits the fan, not the project.

Hard to believe slashdotters tagged such a misleading post as "insightful"

There is no Debian

[FreeSoftwareZealot]

Thanks for that comment, it's important to make that as clear as you have.