Re: Ironies abound (was Re: GPL v3 draft)
- To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
- Subject: Re: Ironies abound (was Re: GPL v3 draft)
- From: Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:56:58 +0000
- Message-id: <[🔎] E1Ez4RO-0007wN-00@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
- In-reply-to: <20060118033236.GA9520@zewt.org>
- References: <20060117084931.GP29884@tennyson.dodds.net> <20060118001038.GA10422@synopsys.com> <20060118001038.GA10422@synopsys.com> <20060118005614.GY9520@zewt.org> <E1Ez3CF-0004gw-00@chiark.greenend.org.uk> <E1Ez3CF-0004gw-00@chiark.greenend.org.uk> <20060118025325.GZ9520@zewt.org> <E1Ez3so-0002HM-00@chiark.greenend.org.uk> <E1Ez3so-0002HM-00@chiark.greenend.org.uk> <20060118033236.GA9520@zewt.org>
Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 03:21:14AM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> I'm not going to defend patch clauses. I think they're massively
>> horrible things, and the world would be a better place without them. But
>> deciding that they're not free any more would involve altering our
>> standards of freedom, and I don't see any way that we can reasonably do
>> that.
>
> It's disappointing, then, that Debian is so fixed in stone that it's
> incapable of correcting its mistakes.
Declaring patch clauses non-free isn't correcting a mistake. It's
stating that the entire community's definition of freedom is wrong.
Patch clauses have been acceptable for longer than Debian has existed.
The degree of freedom they provide has, if anything, increased with
improvements in technology.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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