[Python-modules-team] Bug#709138: Bug report contains non-free content and cannot be processed

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 03:30:06 PM Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On 05/21/2013 03:15 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > On 2013-05-21 09:59, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> >> * Scott Kitterman <scott at kitterman.com>, 2013-05-21, 06:20:
> >>>> What do you mean by "non-free content"?
> >>> 
> >>> The reporter specified the bug report was covered by non-free license.
> >> 
> >> Oh come on. Sure, it's silly to "release" a bug report under a
> >> non-free license. But if we suddenly start caring about bug report
> >> licences, then we might as well shut down the whole BTS, as the vast
> >> majority of submissions don't come with any license at all.
> > 
> > I am not a laywer, but this is my opinion. Under most definitions of
> > copyright, a bug report's copyright belongs to its author. We host them
> > in the BTS at their request, so I don't believe we need any further
> > license. However if a poster asked to have their material removed, I
> > think we'd be obligated to remove it.
> 
> For clarity: the original poster of #709138 asked no such thing; the
> poster merely asserted a CC BY-NC license in the .sig of their e-mail.

No, they said, "My quotes in this email licensed under ..." I read that as 
anything they typed.  That said, I agree there's no obligation to remove.  If 
they didn't want it published in the BTS, then they shouldn't have sent it 
there.

> Despite the fact that i find the NC clause troublingly vague (and
> undoubtably non-dfsg-free), CC BY-NC is clearly no worse than the
> overwhelming majority of bug reports which come with no license
> information at all.
> 
> Debian does not demand that bug reports themselves be DFSG-free, and
> closing a bug report due to non-DFSG-free licensing of the bug report
> itself seems silly to me.  Don't we want to fix bugs?  how can we do
> that if we don't know about or acknowledge them?

I think this sort of thing is obnoxious and annoying and what I did is point 
out behavior inconsistent with our values.  Marking the report closed does not 
also require forgetting about the issue raised.  Love the bug, not the bug 
report.

> let's support our users and appreciate them when they report problems;
> this is how debian gets better.

Yes, but ...  I think obnoxiousness in bug reports should not be ignored 
either.

> Thank you Jakub for identifying the technical problem that needed fixing
> here. :)

Agreed (and in case you're wondering, I did plan to actually look at it later 
in the week - I felt I took on that responsibility when I closed the bug - 
Jakub saved me the work and I appreciate it).

Scott K