Re: Licenses for DebConf6

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>

>         Our goal is to produce the best FREE operating system
>  possible; and a secondary goal is to convince people that when
>  information is free, all kinds of unintended collaboration occurs --
>  which may not even have been envisaged by the original authors.

I dispute that the thing you call a secondary goal is a goal of the
Debian project at all. You are very welcome to have that as a personal
goal, and to do whatever you can to convince people of the matter.
But please do not try to force that goal upon the entire Debian
project. We're here, as a project to produce the best free operating
system possible. No more, no less.

>         If it is not even necesary, then why are we not using this as
>  an opportunity to spread the word that free licenses are indeed
>  viable, and can work even for conferences?

Because the project is not about advocating a free-anything
philosophy. The project should be open to anybody who agrees that free
SOFTWARE is a good thing. It would be wrong, wrong, wrong, to decide
that people are second-class members of the project just beacuse they
do not extend that opinion to things that are not part of the
operating system.

-- 
Henning Makholm                   "We will discuss your youth another time."