Re: Bruce's rhetoric
> Bruce is personally a fairly extreme proponent of free software, by the
> GPL's definition of free.
Well, you are *very* wrong here. I'm positive that, with respect to
his attitude to free software, Bruce's opinion is very close to the
"center of mass" of all debian maintainers.
There are some (3, maybe 4) very vocal maintainers that want debian
to move away from our "free-software-only" position. But that's only
a very, very small minority.
There are also several (well, I know of 2, but we aren't as vocal)
maintainers that would have liked debian to be *more* free (i.e.,
put more restrictions on the allowed licences). For example, the Debian
Free Sofware Guidelines currently allow packages that don't allow
modified source to be distributed (as long as we can distribute patches).
There has never been a vote about that, but I suspect several maintainers
disagree with Debian's (and Bruce's) stance in this respect.
Also, you should be aware that Bruce is actually quite far away from
the GPL's definition of free: The DSFG (approved on by all maintainers,
but I think Bruce agrees with every point in there) allows much more
than GPL (one exception).
Please stop calling Bruce "extremist": You would run out of names to
describe me, RMS, etc very quickly.
> At any rate, while I don't expect to be on the official list of eligible
> voters by the time the election rolls around, I do think that Ian Jackson,
> with his perhaps excessive concern over democratic procedure and
> consensus-building, is an excellent counterpoint to Bruce's ideological
> purity.
Ian wants to the DSFG to move close to GPL too. So, he's more of an
"extremist" than Bruce. How do you call Ian?
> I don't think Debian should be split into factions over this.
This is a rediculous suggestion! Both Bruce and Ian have already
said they very much value each other, and both think the other will
be very well able to guide the project (it's just that they think
they can do an even better job themselves).
You've been waching too much US Politics sleeze!
(Well, actually, I *would* like to know how Ian sleeps with -- could
we get a few nice Debian scandals please?)
> That said, I think it's important to remember that we're not competitors of
> Red Hat's in the strictest sense.
Or in any other sence for that matter.
--
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
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