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Re: Mass bug filing: Cryptographic protection against modification



Brian Nelson wrote:

> Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
> 
>> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 10:54:10AM +0200, Eike zyro Sauer wrote:
>>> Goswin von Brederlow schrieb:
>>> > E.g. /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2:
>>> >  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
>>> >  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
>>> > 
>>> > Thats clearly not DFSG free.
>>> 
>>> Good point.
>>> If this doesn't stop people saying every bit of Debian
>>> has to be DFSG free, nothing will.
>>> Please file a bug.
>>
>> No, please don't. (A.k.a. "get a grip".)
> 
> 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.
> 
> Previously, it was OK since Debian was only required to be "100% free
> software" and those license files could be considered external to the
> actual software work.  In other words, the software (even including data
> and documentation if you'd like) had to be free but the accompanying
> license files did not.  If we now insist on "100% free", I fail to see
> how we can justify this.

Start a GR to explictly allow non-free legal texts into Debian, provided
they are present solely as a condition of distributing other material, and
are isolated in the /usr/share/doc/*/copyright
and /usr/share/common-licenses files.

I'd bet it would get nearly unanimous support.  :-)

Alternatively, help design a scheme by which the license files can be
supplied external to the Debian system.

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



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