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Re: Is vrms really still a Virtual Richard M. Stallman?



Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 02:14:53PM +1100, Andrew Lau wrote:
> > I don't know whether to file a bug report or just laugh my head off.
> > 
> > netsnipe@espresso:~% vrms
> >               Non-free packages installed on espresso
> >                                                                                 
> > doc-linux-nonfree-text    Linux HOWTOs in ASCII format (non-free)
> > doc-rfc-std               Standard RFCs
> > 
> > Now we all know Richard M. Stallman's position on the GFDL, but I find
> > it extremely ironic that his virtual persona in Debian now discriminates
> > against his packages which uses a license his real self would approve. 
> 
> Out of curiosity, have you actually looked at the licences in
> doc-linux-nonfree-text? Some of them are GFDL-with-invariant-sections,
> but quite a number are licences that I think RMS would also disapprove
> of for documentation (as opposed to personal statements).

I think Andrew is right.  I've said this before:

 http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200308/msg02992.html

But even discounting the GFDL issue, I think it's clear that Debian and
GNU don't always agree on what is free and what is not.  So a package
named VRMS should use GNU's standard of free and not ours.  Since it
uses ours, it should be named after us.

(Cc'ed to its maintainer, who is the one person able to take this
decision anyway)

Peter



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