Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms
Ben Finney writes ("Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms"):
> The Social Contract for the Debian Project explicitly states that works
> acceptable for inclusion in Debian must not have conditions specific to
> Debian.
>
> So the Debian Project can't enter bilateral negotiations of software
> freedom between a copyright holder and Debian recipients; the Social
> Contract deliberately excludes that. To be acceptable in Debian, the
> work's license conditions need to grant software freedoms to all,
> regardless of (and prior to) the work being in Debian or not.
That Debian does not accept Debian-specific licences does not mean
that negotiation between Debian and a licensor is impossible. It just
means that whatever settlement is reached needs to confer the same
benefits on other potential licencees as it does on Debian.
It is true that Debian's negotiating position is unusual, in that as a
matter of ethical standards there is not much room for compromise.
The traditional basis of negotiation - give and take - is sometimes
hard to put into practice, because a clause in the licence that is
troublesome to Debian cannot be rendered acceptable by an unrelated
concession elsewhere, but only perhaps by concessions which actually
go to the heart of Debian's objection.
But that does not mean that we (as a project) could not explain
clearly to people what we would like, and have a conversation with
an upstream about what we might be willing to accept.
It is frustrating to me to see that people like the OGC find that
Debian is not even able to clearly communicate with them. I think
this is not OGC's fault. OGC are going about this the right way, and
we (Debian) are failing to respond appropriately.
Someone in OGC's position needs to be able to have a conversation with
someone who can make reasonably authoritative (or at least, usefully
predictive) statements.
Currently, that ought to be the ftpmaster team (individually and where
appropriate collectively), but ftpmaster seem to be unable to do this
in practice. No doubt this is because they are very busy with
important technical work - technical work which, if left undone,
becomes a blocker for much of the rest of the project's activity.
(And, it has to be said, technical work which is itself quite
hard work in every sense.)
Fallbacks include the DPL, who certainly has a moral leadership role,
and perhaps has some ultimate responsibility via the delegation
process. However the DPL has for very good reasons not wanted to
intervene.
That leaves debian-legal. Unfortunately, the preponderance of opinion
on debian-legal takes a very different (and much more stringent) view
of many questions, than ftpmaster (or, indeed, sometimes, than the
project as a whole via GR, or indeed in one occasion that I know of,
than formal legal advice).
Most participants on debian-legal (and I have to admit that I am often
guilty of this) are primarily motivated by a desire to put forward
their own views on what are often contentious (and complex) topics.
As a result, views expressed on debian-legal - even if there seems to
be a consensus - are a poor guide to the views of the project as a
whole.
I don't have a prescription for solving this problem. But at the very
least we should recognise that it is a problem.
One thing which would definitely help is if those people here on
debian-legal approached their work more as servants of the ftpmasters.
People in the position of OGC need to know what ftpmaster is likely to
decide.
I would suggest that (in the absence of a plausible plan for a radical
improvement to the ftpmaster team's ability to direct these
discussions[1]) at the very least, Debian contributors to debian-legal
should focus on attempting to reason from previous ftpmaster decisions
and other expressions of opinion by ftpmaster team members.
Ian.
[1] Plans of the form "ftpmaster should pay more attention" are
obviously of no use. They just amount to beating up the people who
are putting the work in. Likewise "ftpmaster should get help" is not
a useful thing to say, because ftpmaster do indeed welcome volunteers.
"Remove this authority from ftpmaster and give it to someone else"
would be a terrible idea.
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