I fully agree with the argument for the package removal (though nobody should believe that the copyright holder would ever take any copyright-enforcement action, which is irrelevant here).
It is however very reasonable to believe that the user who wants to _restore_ such code to the MBR indeed has the rights to use this code. I mean the user has the licence to use one of the operating systems that come with this code. In the case the user wants to _restore_ this code but does not have such rights, it is anyway the case that the user was already using this code before, and all that ms-sys is doing for the user is to bring his system back to the state it was before a linux install, which cannot be reasonably considered as assisting the user in the copyright infringement. I may be wrong at this point, please feel free to disagree. So the main legal problem is that ms-sys *contains* copyrighted code. There may be other solutions to this rather than removing ms-sys from the repositories. It definitely would not be copyright infringement to ask the user to grab these 446 bytes from a previous backup of their system, or from another PC where the user has a legal copy of such MBR code. For security reasons it could perform a checksum verification to protect the user from a corrupt or virus-infected backup file. So the simple changes in the source would be: * remove the problematic file from the source code * change the source code to -look for a 446-byte file with a specific filename -if absent, produce error message explaining what the user is supposed to do and exit -perform the checksum verification -if fails, produce appropriate error message and exit -copy the file to the mbr (Is it also be copyright violation to distribute checksums along with the program? In this case, add "look for the presence of a checksum file with a given name etc; if absent, produce an error message telling the user to copy it from a trusted source etc and exit".) Don Armstrong wrote: > > severity 425943 serious > retitle 425943 ms-sys contains MBRs which are copyrighted by Microsoft > thanks > > ms-sys contains verbatim copies of the master boot records of windows > 2000 and windows 95B et al. While it would be valid to reimplement an > MBR in such a way that it was functionally similar to an MBR that > boots these MS operating systems, the length and expressive content of > the MBR makes it rather likely that it is copyrightable, and that we > have not been granted the right to distribute, nor is the assembly in > question licensed in accordance with the DFSG (nor is the assembly > even actually present, which falls afoul of DFSG §2). > > Finally, debian/copyright does not properly discuss this problem at > all, nor does it mention the copyrights on syslinux's mbr or any of > the other mbrs which are present. > > Possible solutions to the problem are: > > 1) Re-implement any MBRs for which the source/copyright is not > available. > > 2) Get permission to distribute and modify the MBR from MS and > distribute a disassembled and commented version; if distribution only, > move ms-sys to non-free. > > 3) Remove ms-sys from the archive > > I strongly suggest if #1 or #2 doesn't occur relatively rapidly that > #3 is taken as an interim measure until it can be rectified. > > > Don Armstrong > > -- > I shall require that [a scientific system's] logical form shall be > such that it can be singled out, by means of emperical tests, in a > negative sense: it must be possible for an emperical scientific system > to be refuted by experience. > -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §6 > > http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu > > > -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/ms-sys-removal-request-tp15462196p28107789.html Sent from the Debian Legal mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
