A few people, in the current draft of the DFSG, do not like the idea that the DFSG isn't easily applicable to non-program type software (license, documents (like DFSG), clip-art, etc). I understand this because the drafts weren't meant to. The current draft of the DFSG states: | These guidelines are intended to be applied to software programs, that | is, machine-readable programs that instruct a computer how to perform | specific tasks, its source code, and any other items included with the | original source distribution. The intent is to exempt data files, documentation, etc. from the strict standards we set for the programs(and scripts) unless they are distributed with the program. Rationale: Making the documentation included with the distribution/tar-ball is obvious. If you change a program to add/remove/change a feature, the man page, info doc, readme, pixmaps and other related file that came in the tar-ball needs to be allowed to be update. However, what about other documents that aren't part of any program? Let's take the DFSG as an example. Let's say Star Divisions wanted their StarOffice to be considered Free Software. If the DFSG is DFSG-Free in the purest sense, they could remove the clauses that make their software unfree and re-release it ... the DFSG. I'm know there'd be a clamor from Debian and probably the rest of the Free Software community if they do that. I'm not talking about social issues but licensing issues and under the GPL, what they just did was 100% legal -- unethical and ignored by the people informed pseudo-masses but still legal. In *this* email, I've lumped everything together. I'm sure there are non-program stuff that would make no difference if it were 100% DFSG-free (icons, for example). In order to make things simpler, I'm lumping them into one "category". We could have additional ones (Licenses, Technical Specs, Documents, Documentations, Art all come to mind) with different requirements, but that would be more complicated than a, say DFSG and MAG (Main Acceptance Guide). Licenses can always be less restrictive and allow more "freedoms" then what we require. Just what level of freeness do we want to impose upon this "other stuff" that goes into main. To start, my take on it. Obviously, anything we include in main needs to be freely distributable. It should probably be "derivable". But I don't think it *has* to be "modifiable". Source is another issue. Since source is often hard to determine or the source is often the "software" itself, I don't think any requirements about "source" needs to be made. "Use" is also hard to define because of the diversity of "types" but I would allow "unrestricted use in a manner consistent with the type of software" (meaning, reading of documents, implementation of standards, displaying of art, etc) Of course, licenses have to be revocable from under a current version/distribution the same as DFSG. Any thoughts from anybody? -- Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also. ========================================================================= * http://benham.net/index.html KC7YAQ <>< * * -------------------- * -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- ---------------* * Darren Benham * Version: 3.1 * * <gecko@benham.net> * GCS d+(-) s:+ a29 C++$ UL++>++++ P+++$ L++>++++* * Debian * E? W+++$ N+(-) o? K- w+++$(--) O M-- V- PS-- * * Project Secretary * PE++ Y++ PGP++ t+ 5 X R+ !tv b++++ DI+++ D++ * *<secretary@debian.org>* G++>G+++ e h+ r* y+ * * -------------------- * ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ---------------* =========================================================================
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