Re: DRAFT summary of the OPL; feedback requested
Jeremy Hankins wrote:
Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> writes:
On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Jeremy Hankins wrote:
This is a serious question: how does "(DFSG 3)" tacked on to the end
of a sentence help to explain the issue?
In the same way that a footnote or reference does.
It's always appropriate to refer to the basis for a specific claim.
That's not precisely the situation here. The interesting part of the
claim in a summary isn't that restrictions on modifying make a license
non-free, but that the license restricts modifying. The summary doesn't
describe the DFSG, it describes the license.
But even so, it /seems/ appropriate to me (as a newbie here, and I am
not ultra-familiar with the letter of the DFSG), so I can take a quick
look and say, hmmm, section three (sometimes it's obvious, but sometimes
I'll say what?! where is this in the guidelines?)
In
this case, the claim would be that a particular statement is in direct
validation of a particular tenent of the DFSG. Since you're claiming
that it's violating the DFSG instead of being mere legal fooery, you
should indicate which section(s) of the DFSG is being violated, much
like you would in any form of discourse.
The DFSG is not a 50-page document. It should be trivial for someone
reading a summary to look up the specific section if they need that
information for some reason.
Why not make it yet more trivial? Even if it's not a 50-page doc, it's
not a single paragraph either.
What problem are we trying to solve? There may well be cases where
someone reading a summary would need this info (though I can't think of
any), but is that case frequent enough that we should work to optimize
for it?
I think so. Makes simple things easier and complex things possible.
Obviously, those who know the DFSG know which sections are what, but
it's a service to those who are unfamiliar with the document.
Me! Me! I'm here! I want to help, but I will know the DFSG by heart in
six to nine months!
Someone whose not familiar with the document will probably find
"restricts modifications" more useful than "violates DFSG 3". Even if
you include both, what does the latter add?
* Makes simple things easier.
* Says "DFSG 3 forbids restrictions on modifications".
* When there are many, many "DFSG violations" in a single, "copyrights
holder wants to help but does not see why his license is non-free" case,
eases to categorize them and makes suggestions to the copyrights holder.
But thinking that the DFSG delineates a bunch of categories into
which non-free licenses can fall is a depressingly common, and
absolutely *wrong*, viewpoint. Reinforcing that notion is a bad
idea.
I'm not so sure that it's a wrong viewpoint.
Do I understand you properly? You think that the sections of the DFSG
provide a useful taxonomy of non-free licenses? That would be very
surprising, as I don't believe it was written with that in mind.
I tend to agree with you that it's not a comprehensive taxonomy of
non-freenesses, but, as I said above, serves as a guideline to enlighten
the non-free-for-a-hair people.
I guess we'd have to do a survey of licenses in order to have hard data
to support or deny this idea. But my sense (based on my experience
reading d-l) is that useful categories of license tend to be largely
orthogonal to the way the DFSG is split into sections. Licenses don't
tend to neatly and simply fail some section of the DFSG.
I agree.
It seems to me that this
is a conflation of "DFSG as a guideline vs DFSG as a definition"[1]
and "indicating how the DFSG is used as a guideline."
Not at all. I think that the idea that the DFSG neatly and simply
captures the ways that licenses can be non-free is very much tied to the
idea that the DFSG could be used as a definition.
But IMHO "how to use DFSG (as a guideline)", explicitly, is a good thing.
There are licenses which violate specific sections of the DFSG. We can
use that information to compare licenses and become better at
interpreting the clauses of the DFSG in an appropriate manner.
Can you give an example, or provide more detail? I don't see this at
all, unless it's based on the idea that the DFSG provides a good
taxonomy for non-free licenses.
People will continue to erroneously think of the DFSG as a definition,
just as people erroneously only read legislation without reading case
law. Failing to cite references appropriately isn't really going to
cure this.
No doubt. But we don't need to contribute to the problem.
We can add more information at the end of the summary, saying things like:
== summary
* clause 23: non-free; restricts modifications; viol DFSG#3; see [1] below;
== at the end
[1] this clause is very similar to the clause 12 of the license for
XX&&XX, that was redeemed non-free in the summary of <date>, at <href>;
== !
now, if we can organize this right /and/ archive properly the summaries,
soon we will have a nice archive of "case law"...
--
HTH, best regards,
Massa
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