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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/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C



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