Re: [Gnewsense-dev] status of freedom bugs

[Robert Millan]

On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 12:28:03AM +1030, Karl Goetz wrote:
> http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00319 upstream wontfix 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg01646.html

For the record: the Tech Ctte is not actually empowered to decide on this,
since it's not a technical matter.  It was my poor decision that put them
in a situation where they could make this ruling.  Now that they have, it
can't be overriden except by a GR supermajority (which won't happen).

Just in case someone can learn from my mistake...

> http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00323 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=559444

I think they might have a point here.

> http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00351 partly fixed upstream, forwarded 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=559443

Files without explicit copyright notice aren't necessarily unlicensed.  It
is generally understood that the global license notice applies to them.

It's good practice to put a license notice in each file though.

> http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00354 not sure if debian would consider this a 
> bug.

They wouldn't.  Actually I'm not even sure it's a bug myself.  The person
running the non-free software that could connect to this isn't necessarily
the same who runs the server.  In fact, they might not even know each other.

> http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00355 not sure if debian would consider this a 
> bug.

They consider this a bug for Recommends but not for Suggests.  I think our
easiest approach would be to remove those suggests using archive overrides
rather than removing the affected package.

So we basically have two options:

  - Adjust overrides manually for each package that is found to do this.

  - Remove Suggests field altogether.  It wasn't that useful anyway.

I tend to favour the second due scarcity of manpower.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."