Re: Mass bug filing: Cryptographic protection against modification
Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> writes:
> On Wed, 05 May 2004, Brian Nelson wrote:
>> He's making a valid point. The social contract now reads, "Debian
>> will remain 100% free", and since license files are part of Debian,
>> that's a violation of the contract.
>
> License files that are legal documents (eg. are incorporated by
> copyright) have been excluded from needing to comply with the DFSG for
> quite some time. [Primarily because in their position as a legal text
> they can't be modified anyway, so they must necessarily violate some
> portions of the DFSG.]
I understand, but it's still not allowed by the SC. "100% free" doesn't
give us any leeway.
I'm not going to argue that we should throw out the GPL because we can't
distribute its text because that would be insane. Throwing out the SC
seems a lot more rational at this point.
> It is quite trivial to distinquish between a license which is a legal
> document necessary to include and a license which is just text. The
> latter must comply with the DFSG, while the former need not.[1]
>
> Again, if you seriously think this is a problem (beyond the mere
> argumentative games that are being played here) bring up the issues on
> -legal, or -project or propose a proposal on -vote.
It's a problem because it's unquestionably a violation of the SC (albeit
a silly one), and we can't knowingly violate the SC. Does no else
agree?
--
You win again, gravity!
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