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Re: A possible approach in "solving" the FDL problem
On Tuesday, Aug 12, 2003, at 14:47 US/Eastern, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
Oh, great, so maybe I'll finally have answers to my generic questions to 
FDL supporters: how a license which forbids to put the document on an
encrypted filesystem can be considered free? How a license which forbids
Is it? Are you sure? Or do you plan to distribute encrypted Debian CD's? ;)
It prohibits (paraphrasing) using technical measures to limit access to the work. Encryption definitely seems to count. So would ACLs or permission bits, methinks.
So, it appears that if I have a non word-readable home directory, especially if it happens to be over crypto-loopback, I can't store FDL documents in $HOME.
It is wrong to pick up *some* inconveniences (and even negative aspects) and call the license non-free. Correct way is to sum up all pros and cons for the majority of people on the long terms.
"some inconveniences" like unmodifiable sections, restrictions on crypto, not being able to edit in my preferred format, and many other things brought up on this list? 

Would these "inconveniences" be OK for computer programs?
It's nice to know that you consider freedom just a convenience. I'm sorry, but we --- and the Social Contract makes it very clear --- consider freedom a principal, not a convenience. That's why we demand it. And that's why even a _single_ non-free part of a piece of software (in the "not hardware" sense) is enough that we don't distribute it in main. 


I still wonder why people want to put stuff and stuff in main,
regardless of the consequences. The main section is for FREE SOFTWARE,
do you understand what it means? Not half-free software, not "free
enough" software. Free software.
</rant>
I still wonder why people with the same ardour and consistency do not speak about distribution of software in the non-free section? Why Debian distributes non-free?
The Social Contract says why: As a service to our users. You'll find a lot of people here (hi, Branden!) would like to change that and get rid of non-free.
Oh, yeah, and how exactly is the existence of non-free an argument to put not-quite-free software in main?
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