On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Richard Stallman wrote: > No, it's still a theoretical problem.[1] The above has nothing to > do with the content of the statements themselves, merely the fact > that they are not free under the DFSG. > > The problem is that our non-modifiable political essays might be > removed from our manuals, if the manuals' licenses permitted that. > You have just said you would remove them. We only distribute in Debian things that are DFSG Free. Unmodifiable political essays are not Free. In fact, anything that is unmodifiable[1] cannot be distributed in Debian, be it source code, political essays, or an "Ode To a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning." [They're not Free under the 5 freedoms, and they're certainly not Free under the DFSG.] If the political essays were DFSG free, the maintainers would (most likely) be happy to distribute them without modifying them. However, because they are not DFSG free, we cannot distribute them at all. Therefore, the maintainer tries to serve our users by distributing the largest subset that is Free, which forces him to exise the non-Free bits. [Now, we might distribute them in non-free, but frankly, I hope that section goes the way of the dodo relatively soon.] Don Armstrong 1: Ignoring licences and copyright statements, of course. -- It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong -- Chris Torek http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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