Re: Debian Weekly News - August 19th, 2003
On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 04:43:03PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > > But do not attempt to subvert [the Social Contract and DFSG] by
> > > attempting to persuade people that clause 1 of the Social Contract
> > > says things it obviously does not.
> >
> > If you take Clause 1 of the Social Contract to literally mean that
> > Debian contains nothing save software that is free, then that clause
> > has never been true since it was introduced, since we have always
> > contained many non-software items (documentation, bibles, Linux
> > Gazette issues, RFCs, graphics, wallpapers, sounds, etc.)
>
> But typically those files have had the same freedoms that software has
> in Debian. In cases where they don't, RC bugs have been filed and
> stinks raised. [IE, for RFC's, and GFDL'ed documentation.]
> I don't really see -legal and/or ftpmaster doing much else than
> conservatively interpreting and acting upon the Social Contract
> and the DFSG.
Let's not pretend that there's suddenly some infinite amount of conservative
morality in starting to interpret the old documents differently from how
they were interpreted when all this Evil and Wrong(tm) non-free
documentation came into Debian. Striving for non-restricted documentation
is a fine thing to do, but the present situation is simply not that
black and white. All those "RC" bugs are still not closed for a reason.
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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