On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 09:45:48PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 04:31:06AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > I don't think we should *encourage* reasoning by fiat or whim > > Possibly more acutely: how is "32kB" justified, apart from fiat or whim? Apparently you got excited and didn't read the rest of the message. > > When one has to make an arbitrary decision, it's best accompanied by an > > explanation of the factors that led to it. With my arbitrary limit of > > 32k (or whatever) in my proposal, I have offered such an explanation. > > Like most arbitrary limits, it can't satisfy everyone. Hence the > > flexibility discussed in the "Background" section. The proposal is made > > in hopes of *reducing*, not increasing, the net number of distinct > > arbitrary decisions that get made about packages and the DFSG. > > A well-chosen arbitrary limit will: > > 1) Be sufficiently low as to not violate the intent of DFSG 3; > > 2) Be sufficiently high as to let most "unobjectionable" packages that > > have to be evaluated under this criterion into main; > > 3) Be sufficiently low as to encourage authors/licensors to not get > > carried away with large amounts of invariant text. > > These properties do presume that the freedom to modify a work is held as > > a value. > > Sure, we could throw out the 32k limit and invite everyone to decide for > > himself what's reasonable. (I'll bet you'd find a lot of invariant text > > in main that way. If you package something for Debian, you tend to want > > it in main.) Or we could empower some shadowy, unaccountable person or > > cabal to make licensing decisions for us, and hand down their wisdom > > from on high. > > Better than both of the above, I think, is to be open, honest, and frank > > about our criteria. Abitrary decisions will be held against us more, > > not less, if we leave them undiscussed, unexplained, unjustified, and > > unaccounted for. -- G. Branden Robinson | Convictions are more dangerous Debian GNU/Linux | enemies of truth than lies. branden@debian.org | -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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