Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 04:29:27 +1000, Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> said:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 12:06:05PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> >> I am surprised to hear you say that, since I would personally
>> >> have thought that was against the spirit of the social contract.
>> > I'm sorry, you're mistaken. It was against Andrew's
>> > interpretation of the social contract. It wasn't against mine,
>> > nor to the best of
>> It certainly was against what I took the social contract to be.
> I don't really understand how you could be a member of the project
> in that case: we've never made any particularly strong efforts to
> rid the Debian system of non-free documentation or other data. If
> you believed that was in violation of the social contract, I can't
> really understand your silence.
I was surprised at the RM's lack of support for a free OS, and
lack of suport for free documentation, but I was tired of fighting
the GFDL battles (since I has told to STFU in no uncertain terms when
I tried to get a position statement together).
We have ,often, failed to follow the social contract in the
past, though this was the first wilful violation I recall. However, I
think we are not perfect, and was willing to go along with the rest
of the project on this.
>> I never imagined that Debian was about only part of main being
>> free, indeed, as Bruce has stated, I, too, was under the impression
>> that the SC and the DFSG applied to everything on the Debian CD.
> Well, obviously it doesn't: the text of the GPL isn't distributed
> under DFSG-free terms, for instance. The Debian logo isn't licensed
> under DFSG-free terms either, for that matter. The doc-debian
> package doesn't include a license for the Debian Manifesto.
Oh, if you must descend to quibbles and nitpicks (you know
this we3ll, since you were aware of the discussion in legal where all
this has been long spelled out): The license texts are indeed special
cased, since they determine our right to distrivbute the software in
the first place, and in no way hinder the ability to modify and
distribute mods to the packages in Debian. There are a number of
restrictions of basic freedoms that are documented on my GFDL page at
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml; which
were being glossed over previously.
> I can't understand why you've been violating your best understanding
> of the social contract by distributing make's docs in main. Don't
> you have a problem with promising our users that you won't put
> anything non-free in the Debian system, then going ahead and doing
> it anyway?
Because the change in make documentation terms is relatively
new, that the ramifications of the GFDL were only made clear to me in
the last year or less, that I realize thatit takes time for a project
like Debian to take a stance on this, that I was dangled a carrot
that claimed that it shall all be fixed soon ("concrete evidence of
progress in the next four months"), and that I wanted a consistent
response from Debian for all packages. I may have erred in deciding
that ripping out docs from make and Gnus would raise a firestorm that
the folks talking to the FSF to change the GFDL may not like.
> Violating the social contract -- doing something it explicitly
> forbids -- is different to not fully achieving the goals it implies,
> of course.
Well, in my eyes, you were already doing the former (since I
thought that it was obvious that the SC applied to everything on the
CD). I realize now that what was obvious to me was not so for
everyone else.
>> > my knowledge the interpretation of anyone else responsible in
>> > that area.
>> I hasve no idea who you think are people responsible in those
>> areas.
> ftpmaster@debian.org have the final responsibility for ensuring
> packages in main are DFSG-free. I'm not sure why you've got "no
> idea" of this.
Ah. I thought you were talking about people active in the area
of creating, defining and clarifying the SC, actually.
manoj
--
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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