Re: Draft new DFSG
On Mon, Nov 30, 1998 at 09:45:01AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> On 30-Nov-98, 00:57 (CST), Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@worldvisions.ca> wrote:
> > Typically, common sense will help us decide borderline issues. It's been a
> > serious Debian fallacy lately that absolutely everything we do has to be
> > written down in legalese.
>
> Yes. This could be the thing that eventually kills us.
\aol{me too}
> > We don't need a policy that says "Programs that mail some random
> > user your /etc/shadow file will not be allowed in the distribution."
> > We simply need to think for a moment when it comes up and say "Hey,
> > that's a malicious package, and we shouldn't allow it."
> Absolutely. However, several people said or implied that DFSG compliance
> was the *sole* determiner whether or not a package would be accepted
> into the distribution. Others pointed out that should not be true, that
> we need the ability to apply "common sense" (there's an oxymoron for
> you) as well when accepting a package. The problem, of course, is the
> borderline cases. We need to lean heavily towards the acceptance side of
> the border.
Right on. It's time to get back to producing a Free, high quality
linux distribution. Those of us who are more legally minded can
discuss these issues on -legal, and present the larger group of
developers with a consensus/something to vote on.
Thanks,
--
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org
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