Licensing and technical issues with a Wine package that includes the Mozilla ActiveX Control

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:09:46 +0100, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> Please have a look at http://bugs.debian.org/mozilla-firefox and rethink.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking for there. I see a long list
of bugs. The first one I clicked on randomly was this:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=276576

which has no action on it except for a stock mail saying there are too
many bugs filed against the package!
 
> No, it may be equivalent from the upstream POV. It is definitely a
> difference from the distributors POV, because this way, we are NOT
> redistributing the VC++ runtime. 

Seems like a very fine legal point - people put programs that include the
runtime on magazine coverdisks, collection CDs, aggregated download sites,
even SourceForge all the time and it was never an issue before.

> I don't suggest that that download should happen automatically and
> unasked.

Currently there is a prompt, though clicking "no" is always the wrong
answer as many programs will simply crash when they don't get back what
they expect.

> So you are disappointed from the experiences you made in the past. Well,
> you have to understand that we cannot speak for others. We can only ask
> you to try again with us. In Ubuntu, our wine packages are based on the
> work from Scott, not on the Debian ones.

Sure, Scott does a great job. This whole thread got started because some
random guy, I presume an Ubuntu developer, said words to the effect of
"ActiveX is evil and means spyware on Linux and I don't like the idea of
EXEs in source packages so it doesn't matter what you decide, I'd go in
and change it". What point is this assurance that Ubuntu is OK because
it's Scott when it's only Scott as long as he doesn't make any
controversial decisions? If anybody can edit the packages as they see fit
at any time, it's really Scott + everybody else with an opinion.

> Do the Scott's packages inflict these kind of problems?

No, thank goodness! The Debian ones do. The Gentoo ebuilds have in the
past. As well as many other less popular ones I forget. 

My solution would just be for Scotts package to include the Moz
AX control and keep it in an upstream repository, like the
wine.sourceforge.net one, where he has control of it and can include what
he wants. That way I think everybody is satisfied?

thanks -mike