Re: TAO license - Debian misinterpretation

[Ossama Othman <othman@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu>]

Hi,

> > "Free" by the definition of the GPL.
> 
> No, DFSG-Free, which is the kind of freeness we are discussing.

Thanks for the clarification.

> If you think that the GPL is not free enough, go ahead, you may propose a
> modification to the DFSG that explicitly says that we don't want any GPLed
> software (not recommended ;-).

I wouldn't recommend it either. :)
The GPL may not be free enough, but I certainly need the GPLed software.
Note that I was not implying that we should restrict GPLed software.  That
would be a disaster.  I was merely trying to point out that the GPL can be
just as restrictive as TAO's license.
 
> On the other side, if you think that the "may restrict the source from
> being distributed in modified form _only if patches are allowed ..." is
> too restrictive, you may propose a modification to the DFSG so that "being
> conform to a given standard" becomes yet another allowed exception.

"Yet another allowed exception?"  What's wrong with having exceptions? :)

> But until then, the DFSG that we have are the ones that we currently have.

I understand that, and as long as I am a Debian Developer my packages will
adhere to Debian's standard (sorry, I couldn't resist) ... my packages
will adhere to Debian Policy.  I may not like certain parts of the Policy
but I will adhere to it.

Thanks,
-Ossama
______________________________________________________________________
Ossama Othman <othman@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu>
58 60 1A E8 7A 66 F4 44  74 9F 3C D4 EF BF 35 88  1024/8A04D15D 1998/08/26