Re: Authority and procedures of debian-legal
On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 18:40:14 -0500
Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> You're saying that Debian should maintain an exhaustive list of
> non-free restrictions, that (presumably) adding to that list should be
> require a GR, and that no restrictions not on that list should be
> considered "free" until voted on.
Or it should be documents offically somwhere that debian-legal does have
the authority to impose new restrictions at their discretion, and the
wording of the social contract changed.
> That's a horrible concept. New non-free restrictions are appearing
> every day; having to hold a vote for every new one would destroy
> Debian's ability to remain Free. You're saying that Debian must allow
> a license that says"you must eat three live rats before modifying this
> software", since the DFSG doesn't mention rat-eating. (If you think
> otherwise, I'm very interested to hear your explanation.)
I would expect you to claims its non-free because it discriminates
against vegitarians.
Clause 5+6 are so generic they are meaningless, I could equally argue
that the GPL violates the DFSG because the GPL discriminates against GPL
violators.
Those clauses undermine any judgments based on the DFSG, and i think you
should expect to come under fire if you use it as the strongest reason
to rule something as non-free.
> Now, it may be reasonable to do the reverse: maintain a list of
> restrictions which are considered Free, and require a vote to add to
> it. People are constantly trying to find new ways to restrict users,
> so the list of onerous restrictions grows every day, but it's much
> less common that people come up with new Free restrictions. (Henning
> Makholm proposed doing something like this, but he didn't propose it
> to have authority--that is, to replace the DFSG--and I don't think
> such a thing will ever happen, being too much of a change.)
Thats sounds like a good idea to me.
> New restrictions that we havn't dealt with before should be viewed as
> non-free by default, and the burden of proof should be on the people
> trying to restrict users in a new way to prove that it is an
> acceptable restriction.
But how do you proove a new restriction is acceptable...
I think if a licence has been accepted as complying with the Open Source
Definition, then the burden of proof should be on on the people who want
it excluded from debian.
> And again, I'll point out that it's curious that, instead of arguing
> why these restrictions should be allowed, you're instead screaming
> "you have no authority, so it doesn't matter!" and refusing to discuss
> the real topic. Do you actually care about the subject of choice of
> venue at all, or are you just trying to undermine Debian's ability to
> reject onerous restrictions?
After listening to what you say, i conclude that wether COV is DFSG free
is very open to interpretation, i expected a more concrete reason.
There is no point even considering the question of wether COV means
non-free if there is nothing firm to judge it against. Thats why i
havent discussed it further.
Glenn
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