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Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge



Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 12:40:56 +0200, Benj Mako Hill <mako@debian.org> said:
<snip>
>> The FSF has been communicating with us regularly and there does seem
>> to be movement inside -- just not as much as anyone (the FSF or us)
>> would like.
I wish the fact that many *FSF* developers see problems with the GFDL would
make the FSF move faster.

> Which leads us to a dilemma: the longer the GFDL remain
>  unchallenged, the more entrenched it gets.
<snip>
> I think the conclusions drawn by the Debian community need to
>  be disseminated to the free software community,  and the sooner the
>  better; I've been dissuaded from doing that by the dangling carrot of
>  the looming fix to the license. But, at some point, unless one can
>  bite into the carrot, it fails to be a motivator.

Yep.  And frankly, we've been expecting the fix for longer than six months. 
Originally, there was the comment period for the GFDL revision; the
informal complaints to the FSF only started *after* the comments about the
problems were ignored.  Debian-legal only managed to get an FSF person to
talk to us some time after *that*.

Since then, I see every reason for the pro-Invariant-Section parts of the
FSF to delay, since it entrenches the GFDL further.  In contrast, delay
hurts the proponents of Free Software licenses for documentation, for the
same reason.

> I ask again: how long should we give the rapproachment process
>  this time around?  How long do we wait hoping for concrete meovement
>  (not just private indications that can't be shared with the likes of
>  me)  before we say fish or cut bait?

One year, starting from the committee formation?  That would be October.  I
sure don't think anything longer is reasonable!

-- 
There are none so blind as those who will not see.



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