Re: Proposal - Statement that Sarge will follow Woody requirement for main.
On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 05:27:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Well, speaking of nonsensical... Do you really think "the Bible"::USA as
> "Microsoft's EULA"::Debian?
As an analogy, yes -- that's a significantly better analogy than "the
Bible"::USA and "the Social Contract"::Debian.
The US Constitution disallows religion tests as qualifications for
public officials, and forbids the making of laws about establishing or
exercising religion. This is analogous to the social contract disallowing
non-free software, in my opinion.
A Microsoft EULA is an example of a non-free software license, and the
Bible is an example of a religious work.
The parallels seem pretty obvious to me, though I'll grant it's not
an equivalence.
> > > Which means that the person claiming there is a rule has to meet the
> > > burden of proof. Seriously, I'm happy to discuss this; but if you want
> > > proof that there's no such rule, you're asking for the impossible,
> > > even if it's the case.
> > Let's settle for "if we are going to disregard the social contract,
> > what is our basis for doing so, why is that ok, and how is that not
> > setting aside some part of the social contract for something else?"
>
> "If we're going to disregard Micorosoft's EULA, what is our basis for doing
> so?"
"That we (as a project) are not distributing any software under that
license, and it's not mentioned in the constitution."
This should be sufficient to disregard it when deciding what the project
is trying to do.
> We don't need a basis -- we need a basis to *regard* it. One possibility
> is that it's constitutionally required. Another possibility is that
> it's a good idea. These have different consequences depending on which
> is the case.
Exactly.
> Feh, whatever. If you're not interested in considering my view, I'll
> stop wasting our time.
My impression is that you've not explained your view very well.
For example [and perhaps oversimplifying], you've been focussing on what
the social contract isn't without saying much about what you think the
social contract is. This comes across as trivializing.
--
Raul
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