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Re: Proposed: Debian's Five Freedoms for Free Works



* Anton Zinoviev (anton@lml.bas.bg) wrote:
> On 12.VI.2003 at 16:21 Branden Robinson wrote:
> >
> > The Free Software Foundation promulgates, and the Debian Project
> > generally accepts, four essential freedoms as defining "Free
> > Software".
> > 
> > The following is an enumeration of freedoms intended to apply to
> > non-public-domain works in general.
> 
> I'd like to mention here that FSF talks about free software and free
> documentation and not about free works.  It is questionable whether we
> have to require these freedoms from works that are not software, nor
> documentation.
> 
> For our Debian distribution the difference is not much important as we
> distribute only software and documentation.  Nevertheless there is a
> great philosophical difference.  Do we start promoting philosophical
> ideas that are not directly related to our own work?  I doubt there
> will be any benefit if we start doing this.

as the world progresses more and more into the realm of 'multimedia'
(hehe) we will see, i think, that debian will be distributing works not
describable as software or documentation: image files, music,
animations, etc, etc, etc.

requiring that any such works be free is a very large step to take, and
one that i feel is worth taking.

i've recently been reading http://www.dreamsongs.com/MobSoftware.html,
which has several interesting points on similar lines (but is mostly OT
for this discussion).

iain

-- 
wh33, y1p33 3tc.

"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is
not shared." -St. Augustine



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