Re: license requirements for a book to be in free section
On Sat, Feb 02, 2002 at 09:59:01AM +0100, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> A license that would only allow distribution of
> software non-commercially would be unusable for Debian, but using only
> the four freedoms, there's seemingly nothing wrong with such a
> license.
Ah, I see. Well, yes, that's true. I am always thinking about the thing,
the four freedoms plus RMS explanation, which, as you say, mentions this as
well as other things.
> Also note that RMS has said (if I recall correctly) that he does not
> think that freedom 3 is necessary for non-functional works. (E.g. the
> GNU manifesto.)
Indeed. Debians manifesto doesn't even has a copyright notice not to speak
of a license, and for the DFSG you will find people who say that even the
copyright holders must not change it. Fact is that the FSF never was as
zealous as some people want to make it appear. The canonical term used by
RMS is: generally useful information of technical nature.
(To make this a more delightful read, here is one of his examples from a talk
in Bruxelles: If you told him about a cool sexual practice you had, he'd ususally
not feel that he must have the freedom to tell everyone about it. But if that
sexual practice is some new way to have sex, and it is such a great thing
that it makes people more happy and healthier, and the world in general a
better place if people would knew about it, he probably would compelled to
have the freedom to tell everyone about it ;)
> > Actually, I don't believe it (although I am not sure, as I have no special
> > insight into such matters). The guidelines are pretty clear, basically, and
> > RMS had an amazing consistent stance upon these issues since a couple of
> > years. In corner cases, the matter is discussed and it seems to me RMS makes
> > a final decision.
>
> Huh? Don't they have like, an elected board or some kind of democracy?
*laugh* Not as far as I know.
> > I think the four freedoms come closest to a definition of free software as
> > you can get.
>
> Agreed. What I'm unsure of is whether that definition is detailed
> enough to work consistently as guidelines for debian-legal.
Well, I was forgetting that it doesn't include that explanatory stuff.
But then, nothing you can write, and if it has 600 pages, will ever be
enough for debian-legal (and it would be insane to try). Maybe our opinion
differs here, but I hold it with Thomas (applying human sense).
Sometimes I think that the DSFG could be a recipe for christmas cookies, and
at debian-legal you would still have the very same discussions with the same
topics and the same result. All interesting issues are not covered by it,
and have always been subject to interpretation by us. And I don't think
that is a bad thing (OTOH, I wouldn't mind to get some of the worse gaps
fixed).
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
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