Re: REVISED PROPOSAL regarding DFSG 3 and 4, licenses, and modifiable text

[Scott Dier <sdier@debian.org>]

* Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> [011202 02:23]:
> On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 11:14:37PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:
> > > If it's not *Software* then either,
> > > 1) We must treat it as such, or;
> > > 2) We have no mandate to deal with it at all.
> > We don't need a mandate.  The US Congress is (theoretically) limited
> > to the enumerated powers given in the US Constitution, but that's a
> > unique case.
> Rather than having a gigantic footnote to the Social Contract that
> defines "software" -- a definition with which many people are certain to
> disagree -- we can sidestep the issue by treating everything that is
> submitted to Debian as Software, and reserving ourselves to making a
> determination as to whether or not it is Free.


I agree, much of what Debian Maintainers package for its Users is not
Software, but Copyrighted Licensed works.  Perhaps the DFSG isn't the
right name for it, since the awareness of licensed documenation is
higher these days.

Perhaps call it the DFLG, Debian Free Licensing Guidelines, where as the
License is the focus, and not the contents.

Pehraps lots of docs in main will be affected, but do we want to
deticate space and bandwidth to non-free licensing, or does the cabal of
publishing ideas limit us to thinking of documentation as Free?

-- 
Scott Dier <dieman@ringworld.org> <sdier@debian.org>
http://www.ringworld.org/  #linuxos@irc.openprojects.net

So I ran up to him, and the exchange went something like this:
Me: Oh my god! You're Larry Niven!
Him: Oh my god! You're Wil Wheaton!
	-Wil Wheaton, in a Slashdot interview