Re: A possible approach in "solving" the FDL problem
"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <sena@hurd.homeunix.org> writes:
>> On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 16:00, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
>>> Let's imagine infinite scale with absolute freedom(liberty) on one
>>> side and absolute non-freedom on another. The border between free
>>> and non-free will be at 0.
> To find the exact value, one should find all possible aspects and sum
> up all pros and cons for the majority of people on the long terms. It
> is not something you can do in one day, sorry.
>
> For Debian purpoces it is enough to determine the sign.
Ah! Now I think I understand your (rather confusing at first)
description of freedom.
You recommend that we assign values to all the pros & cons of a
particular license, and call free any license in which the positives
outweigh the negatives. Am I understanding you correctly?
The problem with this* is that what you're really describing is the
utility of the license, which is something completely different from
the freedom of it. Take the simple case of a license that pays me to
accept it -- it may be non-free in many ways, but a lot of people
would probably think the positives (free money) outweigh the negatives
(no right to modify or redistribute, for example).
* If you ignore the (significant!) difficulty of assigning values to
characteristics, since people will no doubt disagree.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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