On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 08:11:09PM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote: > I think it may be possible to extend the DFSG[2] a little bit to permit > information under RMS's libertarian license-in-development, > > I don't know of any conflict between any license I am developing and > the DFSG; if you think there is one, could you please tell me the > specifics? Sorry, I was unclear. I was including your forthcoming license in a list of content licenses. As I understand your proposed license, it has no problems falling within the existing DFSG. This is not true for some of the others; whether Debian wants to extend its penumbra in the manner I described is something that will have to be extensively discussed. I'd certainly like your input on this issue; I've seen statements from you in the past which I understood to mean that you don't regard things like game level data as being crucial for software freedom in the same way that algorithms and executable code are. Keith Packard of XFree86, for instance, thinks that we'll never see much in the way of high-quality fonts that are free software, because the problems are just too hard. He knows far more about digital typography than I do, so I didn't argue with him; but the basic rationale does sound familiar, doesn't it? "Free software is fine for things like compilers but it just won't work for applications; it's fine for applications but it will never produce a desktop; it's fine for desktop environments but it will never produce an office suite..." Free software has become so successful that the arguments about what it can and cannot accomplish are being held about things that arguably aren't software at all. Documentation, polymodels, sound effects, fonts -- we need a way to separate the free wheat from the proprietary chaff in all of these cases. > PS: Please don't decribe my work as "libertarian"--I disagree very > strongly with that political party. If I were referring to the Libertarian Party, I would have capitalized the "l". I am still aware of libertarianism as a concept separate from the label that some organization has adopted for itself. (See also "republican", "democratic", "catholic", etc.) It seemed an appropriate word to use for a license that permits the licensee broad latitude to copy, modify, and redistribute -- in other words, to exercise a large subset of the liberties he would enjoy if the licensed work were in the public domain. If I have made an error in my analysis on this level, please point it out to me; otherwise, I must stand by my choice of terminology, which is more or less congruent with the dictionary definition of the term. I'll keep in mind the potential confusion in the future, however, and might have to start reserving a footnote for it. -- G. Branden Robinson | Measure with micrometer, Debian GNU/Linux | mark with chalk, branden@ecn.purdue.edu | cut with axe, roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ | hope like hell.
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