Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
Am 21.08.2013 18:42, schrieb Joerg Schilling:
The GPL is discouraged by Debian... You should think about why you did not help to defend the GPL in 2005
*bruhaha* half of the debian distribution including the kernel *is* GPL as well as all other linux distributions
But Debian attacked cdrtools for using the GPL when it has been 100% GPL.
You should face reality.
Jörg
On 8/21/2013 10:05 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
But Debian attacked cdrtools for using the GPL when it has been 100% GPL.
I find this an extremely odd assertation. I am not nor ever have been a Debian user, but I know Debian is based on the Linux Kernel, uses GCC, gnu libc, etc as its core, and these are ALL gpl. in what way were you 'attacked' by a 'project' (not an individual? we all know individuals can act loony) for using the same license as the bulk of the rest of the Debian distribution?
On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 11:18:48 -0700 John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 8/21/2013 10:05 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
But Debian attacked cdrtools for using the GPL when it has been 100% GPL.
I find this an extremely odd assertation. I am not nor ever have been a Debian user, but I know Debian is based on the Linux Kernel, uses GCC, gnu libc, etc as its core, and these are ALL gpl. in what way were you 'attacked' by a 'project' (not an individual? we all know individuals can act loony) for using the same license as the bulk of the rest of the Debian distribution?
While Joerg certainly knows better... I think the issue was that cdrtools could be built only with the schilly-toolchain (or whatever the exact name), and that was *not* GPL. So according to some interpretations of the GPL, while cdrtools was claiming to be GPL-licensed, there was no GPL-compatible way to build the binaries from that source, which arguably made it violate GPL. That's why Debian folks attacked, as far as I understood.
The issue was resolved by Joerg re-licensing the cdrtools to CDDL, which does not impose restrictions on the toolchain used to build it. And that made it a no-go for mostly all distros since.
All this with the usual caveat that my memory might not be very correct here... ;-)
Best, :-) Marko
Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com wrote:
While Joerg certainly knows better... I think the issue was that cdrtools could be built only with the schilly-toolchain (or whatever the exact name), and that was *not* GPL. So according to some interpretations of the GPL, while cdrtools was claiming to be GPL-licensed, there was no GPL-compatible way to build the binaries from that source, which arguably made it violate GPL. That's why Debian folks attacked, as far as I understood.
If such false claims are published on a license and the license steward does not correct them, the licence needs to be seen as a weak license and avoided because it causes a high risk of being sued for no reason.
Jörg
John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 8/21/2013 10:05 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
But Debian attacked cdrtools for using the GPL when it has been 100% GPL.
I find this an extremely odd assertation. I am not nor ever have been a Debian user, but I know Debian is based on the Linux Kernel, uses GCC, gnu libc, etc as its core, and these are ALL gpl. in what way were you 'attacked' by a 'project' (not an individual? we all know individuals can act loony) for using the same license as the bulk of the rest of the Debian distribution?
The origin of course was a single hostile and lazy person: Eduard Bloch.
Every larger project may have black sheeps... but I expect a project to do what is needed to keep it's credibility and thus to discipline people who destroy the credibility of a project. Debian was kindly asked to replace the hostile person in December 2004. Debian (as a project) decided to support the attacker instead of it's own reputation. So a personal problem from May 2004 was was turned into a Debian problem in December 2004.
Note that before, there was a very kind packager for cdrtools at Debian. He finished his studies in late 2003 and dod not have the needed time anymore. A new packager was set up and this person was so lazy that soon more than 50 bugs in the Debian bug tracking were caused by the fact that he did not upgrade to a newer version.
In May 2004, he send a patch that was claimed to implement UTF-8 support for mkisofs. This patch did only address aprox. 50% of the places in the code that need a change for supporting UTF-8 and the code that was changed was so buggy that it caused plenty of compiler warnings.
I send im this information and explained that I cannot include the patch in the main code for quality reasons. At that time Bloch started to send repeated personal insults to me.
Jörg
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Joerg Schilling -
John R Pierce -
Marko Vojinovic