Re: [seul-edu] Re: ISO project--a different approach

[Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 09:11:44AM -0500, Kyle Hutson wrote:
> Why not? Doesn't it essentially use the Mozilla license with
> s/Netscape/Sun/ ?

Hm, it is not as bad as I thought.  First off, I was reading old BTS
information.  There is a newer bug# that says it has been packaged for
unstable, so the outstanding ITPs are no longer relevant.

	See http://bugs.debian.org/101762

It is not Openoffice itself that has licensing problems, it is the Sun Java
that it currently depends upon in order to build (there is no runtime
dependency on non-free Java for the binary package, however).

Thus, Openoffice will appear shortly in contrib[0].  (It is delayed somewhat
because the initial upload to unstable/contrib was rejected due to some
problems with missing build dependencies in the packaging, but
conservatively it should make it in over the next month.)

The debian-openoffice team is working towards getting Openoffice to build
with a free Java implementation so it will go into main.  This will take
longer.

[0] For those of you not familiar with Debian's sections, everything that
    is DFSG-free (i.e. free according to the Debian Free Software
    Guidelines) goes into section "main".  Packages that fail the DFSG, but
    we are still allowed to distribute from our ftp site go into non-free.
    Packages that would themselves pass the DFSG, but depend on packages
    that either fail the DFSG or are not in Debian main go into "contrib".

    That is, "contrib" isn't software contributed from outside sources
    (which often connotes inferior packaging) as it is with other distros.

    Neither non-free or contrib can appear on any "official" Debian CD.
    However, a Debian CD vendor may choose to drop the "official"
    designation and distribute their CD with whichever contrib & non-free
    packages they feel they can redistribute without legal repercussions.
    Including "contrib" on a CD is a fairly safe bet here, but with
    "non-free" the vendor has to be very careful that they aren't walking
    into a licensing minefield.

Ben
-- 
    nSLUG       http://www.nslug.ns.ca      synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
    Debian      http://www.debian.org       synrg@debian.org
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