Re: What do you win by moving things to non-free?
On 20-Apr-05, 09:34 (CDT), Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> > And Debian has tried to work on reducing the impact, by trying
> > to convince the FSF to fix their license. Not only have they
> > not done so, they've completely stonewalled, refusing to discuss
> > the issue at all. Debian has done more than its part in trying
> > to fix this. It didn't work. It's time to remove the non-free
> > stuff (or will be soon).
>
> The fact that the discussion has not been public does not mean that the
> FSF have refused to discuss the issue.
Oh, come on. It's been what, 15 months since the FSF requested comments
on the "draft" GFDL? (Or was that 2003?) They then released it
unchanged, and made no visible response to the many questions/concerns
raised in those comments. Since then we've heard several Debian
developers say "We're talking to the FSF, but don't want to make public
comments until the FSF says it's okay." (And that made sense, as it
would to anyone whose been reading debian-devel (or -legal) for more
than a week.) But we heard this last summer, and nothing ever came of
it. And now you say it's *still* going on?
I've got no doubts about the honesty and good intent of the Debian
developers involved. I believe that they really think that the FSF will
eventually make some sort of response. But you folks need to realize
when you're being strung along, and get on with your lives. RMS has
decided that it's more important to force people to distribute his
essays than allow them share and reuse documentation. I think he's blown
this decision, but it's fairly obvious at this point that he's not going
to change his mind. All we can do is discourage use of the GFDL, and
hope that the GPL3 isn't equally screwed up.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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