Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

[Humberto Massa]

@ 06/05/2004 15:29 : wrote Hans Reiser :

>I just modified the Reiser4 license to be the following:
>
>The Anti-Plagiarism License
>  
>
etc.

Mr. Heiser,

I am a software developer, a paralegal, and a Debian user. Recently, 
I've participated in various technical discussions in debian-devel and 
in various licensing discussions in -legal. While I have sent you, both 
by way of the lists and personally, some questions about the reasoning 
of your licenses, you have up to the present moment refrained to answer me.

I stated in those e-mails that I am a great admirer of your work. I 
stated, also, that I agree with your concerns about plagiarism. I said, 
moreover, that I think that your work and the other reiser[34] 
contributors' work is important. Important to Debian. Important to the 
Linux community. Important to the Linux users. It's certainly important 
to me.

What I don't understand is _why_ are you doing this in such a beligerant 
manner. I repeat: please, let's work our differences out. Let us reach 
consensus and move forward.

Reading all the lists archives and bug reports, it appears to me that 
(at least part of) the problem is the following: some of your filesystem 
utilities displayed, unconditionally, a big (by some measure, but 
greater than 3 lines) attribution of credits. This was too much to some 
package maintainers, and they transferred said text to a file in the 
documentation directory for the package. You filed a bug, the maintainer 
gave you the shoulder, flames ensued, etc.

I don't agree with you that this is plagiarism. I'm sorry to say, but, 
in my dictionary (and in the jurisdiction I live in) plagiarism would 
be, for instance, remove *all* the credit attributions in the packages, 
or substituting them for some credits crediting the wrong person or 
persons. In this case, here in Brasil at least, the person commiting 
such acts would be subject to one to four years in jail and a fine.

The legal part of this remembers me of another problem, with your old 
"clarifications" over the GPL and with your new Anti-Plagiarism License: 
it's a GPL-incompatible license ... for a work (reiser4) which is 
derived from a GPL'd work (linux).

This pretty much renders your product (reiser4) undistributable by any 
person other than yourself. And, in principle, even by yourself. And I 
think this is a very big loss.

About the credits: if the credits attribution is too long to fit by the 
standards of the package's maintainer (who is the proper authority in 
the case, seemingly), what other solution there is? Just putting a line 
like:

"Many people contributed to this project. Please look: 
/usr/share/doc/reiserfsprogs/CREDITS."

is not enough? I mean, instead of the 20+ lines of the current display 
in dispute? As someone noticed in debian-legal, many people leave the 
theather before the credits roll. They know it's a (for instance) George 
Lucas' movie, but they won't know the name of the cameramen. Isn't it 
the same thing? If you want to see the credits, go and see them. It's 
not like Debian did make them disappear.

Now, I have only one question: is there a way you could back out in your 
opinion and return to the old licensing for your products, provided a 
consensus on moment and size of the credits attribution is reached? If 
the answer is yes, I volunteer to mediate the discussions between you 
and the affected package(s) maintainer(s).

-- 
best regards,
Humberto Massa

Re: Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

[Hans Reiser]

Another example:

reiser@linux:~/reiser4progs-0.5.3> /sbin/mkreiserfs -V
mkreiserfs 3.6.9 (2003 www.namesys.com)

A pair of credits:
Edward Shushkin wrote the encryption and compression  file plugins,  and 
the V3
journal relocation code.

Vladimir Demidov wrote the parser for sys_reiser4(), the V3 alpha port, 
part of
the V3  journal  relocation code,  and helped  Hans keep  the business  
side of
things running.



Humberto Massa wrote:

> @ 06/05/2004 15:29 : wrote Hans Reiser :
>
>> I just modified the Reiser4 license to be the following:
>>
>> The Anti-Plagiarism License
>>  
>>
> etc.
>
> Mr. Heiser,
>
> I am a software developer, a paralegal, and a Debian user. Recently, 
> I've participated in various technical discussions in debian-devel and 
> in various licensing discussions in -legal. While I have sent you, 
> both by way of the lists and personally, some questions about the 
> reasoning of your licenses, you have up to the present moment 
> refrained to answer me.
>
> I stated in those e-mails that I am a great admirer of your work. I 
> stated, also, that I agree with your concerns about plagiarism. I 
> said, moreover, that I think that your work and the other reiser[34] 
> contributors' work is important. Important to Debian. Important to the 
> Linux community. Important to the Linux users. It's certainly 
> important to me.
>
> What I don't understand is _why_ are you doing this in such a 
> beligerant manner. I repeat: please, let's work our differences out. 
> Let us reach consensus and move forward.
>
> Reading all the lists archives and bug reports, it appears to me that 
> (at least part of) the problem is the following: some of your 
> filesystem utilities displayed, unconditionally, a big (by some 
> measure, but greater than 3 lines) attribution of credits. This was 
> too much to some package maintainers, and they transferred said text 
> to a file in the documentation directory for the package. You filed a 
> bug, the maintainer gave you the shoulder, flames ensued, etc.
>
> I don't agree with you that this is plagiarism. I'm sorry to say, but, 
> in my dictionary (and in the jurisdiction I live in) plagiarism would 
> be, for instance, remove *all* the credit attributions in the 
> packages, or substituting them for some credits crediting the wrong 
> person or persons. In this case, here in Brasil at least, the person 
> commiting such acts would be subject to one to four years in jail and 
> a fine.
>
> The legal part of this remembers me of another problem, with your old 
> "clarifications" over the GPL and with your new Anti-Plagiarism 
> License: it's a GPL-incompatible license ... for a work (reiser4) 
> which is derived from a GPL'd work (linux).
>
> This pretty much renders your product (reiser4) undistributable by any 
> person other than yourself. And, in principle, even by yourself. And I 
> think this is a very big loss.
>
> About the credits: if the credits attribution is too long to fit by 
> the standards of the package's maintainer (who is the proper authority 
> in the case, seemingly), what other solution there is? Just putting a 
> line like:
>
> "Many people contributed to this project. Please look: 
> /usr/share/doc/reiserfsprogs/CREDITS."
>
> is not enough? I mean, instead of the 20+ lines of the current display 
> in dispute? As someone noticed in debian-legal, many people leave the 
> theather before the credits roll. They know it's a (for instance) 
> George Lucas' movie, but they won't know the name of the cameramen. 
> Isn't it the same thing? If you want to see the credits, go and see 
> them. It's not like Debian did make them disappear.
>
> Now, I have only one question: is there a way you could back out in 
> your opinion and return to the old licensing for your products, 
> provided a consensus on moment and size of the credits attribution is 
> reached? If the answer is yes, I volunteer to mediate the discussions 
> between you and the affected package(s) maintainer(s).
>
Try running mkreiserfs and seeing if it really is all that bad, ok?

Thanks for caring.

Hans

Re: Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

[Humberto Massa]

@ 06/05/2004 16:52 : wrote Hans Reiser :

>Another example:
>
>  
>
<snikt>

>Try running mkreiserfs and seeing if it really is all that bad, ok?
>  
>
While I _don't_ think it is all that bad, as I told you, the proper 
authority in this case is the package maintainer(s). I'll try to contact 
him/her/them and come with some solution.

>Thanks for caring.
>
>Hans
>  
>


-- 
best regards, Massa

Re: Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

[Matthew Palmer]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 12:26:05PM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Another example:
> 
> reiser@linux:~/reiser4progs-0.5.3> /sbin/mkreiserfs -V
> mkreiserfs 3.6.9 (2003 www.namesys.com)
> 
> A pair of credits:
> Edward Shushkin wrote the encryption and compression  file plugins,  and 
> the V3
> journal relocation code.
> 
> Vladimir Demidov wrote the parser for sys_reiser4(), the V3 alpha port, 
> part of
> the V3  journal  relocation code,  and helped  Hans keep  the business  
> side of
> things running.

I note that you appear to have put a random selection of credits in the
output on each invocation (at least, two invocations on 3.6.13 give me
different credits).  This makes the definition of what "credits" are, and
"giving equal prominence" to all of them even harder.  As a contributor, if
I care that much about getting my name "in lights", and part of the
mandatory output of a program, the chances are I don't want to possibly miss
that chance on a lot of eyeballs and place myself subject to the vagaries of
a random number generator.

Of course, in this case I would imagine that all of your contributors have
said it's OK, but would you consider this modification OK if you hadn't made
it?  It certainly would be failing the letter of "equal prominence to all",
but you've done it yourself?  A basic tenet of software freedom (IMO) is
that modifications should be OK no matter who does them -- this allows
everyone the power to fork if they so choose.

Oh dear, I appear to have become embroiled in a long thread...

- Matt

Re: Debian: reiser4 non-DFSG-free. !?!

[Hans Reiser]

Humberto, I thought about it a bit more, and probably you are right in 
your analysis of what makes things derived or not derived, and what the 
legal consequence of that is.

Hans