bcfg2 license?

[Hans de Goede]

Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 December 2006 06:29, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> Dennis Gilmore wrote:
>>> On Monday 18 December 2006 22:12, Jeffrey C. Ollie wrote:
>>>> http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/bcfg2/browser/trunk/bcfg2/LICENSE
>>>>
>>>> Free enough for extras?
>>>>
>>>> Jeff
>>> We have simple guidelines.  must be OSI or FSF approved.   If its not
>>> then its not acceptable
>> That is not how I and many others read the guidelines, if its on one of
>> those 2 approved lists then its easy, but if it matches their guidelines
>> or the DFSG then its ok too. To quote the guidelines:
>> "We clarify an open source license in three ways:" Notice clarify,
>> nowhere the guidelines say the license must be on of those 3 lists!
> the three does not include DFSG  what debain does has zero impact on what we 
> do 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-76294f12c6b481792eb001ba9763d95e2792e825
> 
> says 
> 
> We clarify an open source license in three ways: 
>  OSI-approved license. You can find the list of OSI approved licenses here: 
> [WWW] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ 
>  GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find the list here: [WWW] 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses 
>  GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses. You can find the list here: [WWW] 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
>  
> followed in the guidelines by
> 
>  If the license of a package isn't covered in one of those lists, urge the 
> upstream maintainer to seek OSI-approval for their license here: [WWW] 
> http://www.opensource.org/docs/certification_mark.php#approval
> 
>> Take for example the short license which is on Crystal Stacker, which I
>> negotiated personally with the author from a freeware license with
>> abnoxious clauses:
> 
>> A short 100% fine license, but according to you not acceptable, which is
>> very strange since it has been in FE for about a year now.
> Which i would not of allowed in as it is not using an approved license.   
> There is to be an audit license of Extras at some point in the new year.  at 
> that time anything not meeting our guidelines will need to be removed.
> 

What is wrong with this license?? There are a lot of other packages out 
there both in Core and Extras with licenses not on the mentioned list, 
once again the guidelines mention these 3 list as CLARIFICATION, not as 
a list of the only permitted ones, this is not a black and white 
situation. I challenge you to please tell me whats wrong with the 
crystal stacker license from a freedom POV. Fedora is all about Freedom, 
restriciting the software which can go on to only that with licenses on 
a few stupid lists restricts Freedom and thus is bad, <period> .

> 
>> Please lets keep pragmatic on this. According to me the current bcfg2
>> license is just fine. Its even in Debian and thus meets the DFSG and
>> thus is ok for FE.
> Again Debian's guidelines are Debian's not fedora's
> 

Here in the Netherlands we have a saying: "Being holier then the pope" 
since Debian (main / base) is Free software only in an extreme way 
(think removing all firmware from the distro, think no gfdl licensed 
docs) I think that what Debian does, does matter, if we start being 
holier then Debian then we are doing something wrong, again lets be 
pragmatic

Regards,

Hans