On Sun, May 30, 2004 at 06:28:12AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > I have been toying with the possibility of rewriting the DFSG such > that it enumerates which things a free license *can* do, rather than > just give examples of things it *cannot*. I think that such a revision > could get the guidelines to be much closer to the *actual* practise of > how we evaluate licenses than if we simply make local adjustments to > the current DFSG. The downside is that the whole truth cannot be > condensed into the "ten commandments" schema of the current DFSG. I personally do not think it is a good idea to undertake this endeavor as a DFSG replacement. I explicated my "theory of DFSG" operation in a mail to this list in March of 2003: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00211.html That said, I do very much appreciate your work in very methodically documenting the many silly loopholes and exceptions we have accreted over the years to due to our haste and carelesness -- and also the many slick tricks licensors have tried to play to undermine the spirit of free software while abiding by some expressions of its "letter".) I think your document will end up being very valuable to us, but I personally do not feel that its approach makes it suitable as a replacement for the DFSG. Please don't interpret anything in this message as a backhanded compliment, though I am sure we probably disagree as to what the DFSG should be. It was obviously a lot of hard work to prepare this document, and reading it was like a trip down the debian-legal flamewar memory lane, with the outcomes neatly boiled down. I think your work on this document is a valuable service to the Project. -- G. Branden Robinson | Psychology is really biology. Debian GNU/Linux | Biology is really chemistry. branden@debian.org | Chemistry is really physics. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | Physics is really math.
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