Re: Drop DFSG in favour of OSD?
> > Actually, it probably would be appropriate to have a document which
> > discusses some of the more prominent history (and successes) behind
> > "open source". I think Debian, Cygnus, GNU, the FSF and rms all deserve
> > explicit mention (chronological order is roughly the reverse of what I've
> > listed).
Will Lowe <harpo@udel.edu> wrote:
> Righto. I just meant in the "what do we call our DFSG now that somebody's
> changed the name" ... we keep calling them DFSG with the note that the
> Open Source guidelines are the same but renamed.
>
> I suppose that if Open Source really takes off I'll vote for just
> dropping the DFSG name entirely eventually, just because having seventeen
> sets of standards which are all the same is silly, and I'd rather bite
> the bullet and use somebody else's name than have nobody understand DFSG.
First off, I wish people wouldn't think of the Open Source thing as
something completely separate from Debian -- it's a trademark of
Software in the Public Interest which is basically us.
Secondly, there are a few things about the language in the Open Source
Definition that I'd like to see in the DFSG -- some of the points are
fleshed out better, and I like the explicit parallel rationale (with
links in the html format).
Third, I think that in the debian context that it's useful to maintain
the debian specific comments -- in some ways the DFSG is a bit better
than the OSD precisely because of this.
Fourth, the only people who would be confused by the distinction between
the OSD and the DFSG should be people who have read neither. And,
frankly, this case doesn't really matter a lot (because these people
wouldn't even know what they're confused about, there may not be a lot
we can do for them).
More generally, I think this is a case where it's appropriate to solve
the problems at hand and to wait and see on the potential problems.
--
Raul
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