Re: Final Draft: Interpretive Guideline regarding DFSG clause 3
On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 07:18:37PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 01:56:44PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > The DFSG was not written or intended to be an automated mechanism
> > which you apply to a software and you get "yes" or "no" as output.
>
> Agreed; it's a manual mechanism which you apply to a work and you get
> "yes" or "no" as output.
Strange that you see it that way. In my eyes it is only a set of guidelines
we agreed upon some time ago.
> Thus I supplied an interpretive guideline instead of, say, a Perl
> script.
You might call it an interpretive guideline, but what it implies is actually
a perl script. The wording is precise enough to allow an almost automatic
decision if a package fits your interpretive guideline or not. (It is also
easy to circumvent, btw, just add some content and apply the licenses and
copyright notices to it. Works as long as the licenses are free ones).
> > The idea that clause 3 has anything to say about the status of
> > copyright notices or licenses shows how detached some people appear to
> > be. It's completely up-side down: As if the DFSG says anything about
> > what Debian should require or what not. It's the other way round:
> > The DFSG is a declaration of what Debian requires about software. If
> > you now detach the DFSG and try to read it without the Debian people
> > behind it, and force the interpretation back to Debian, you indeed get
> > absurd results.
>
> This accusation is cleverly worded but utterly groundless. Unless, of
> course, you think the people who have been participating in this entire
> discussion, and those who have and will continue to be packaging
> software for Debian, and those who will be reviewing licenses before
> accepting packages into the main section of our archive, aren't "Debian
> people".
Your wording is interesting in turn. You put some strange implication in
what I wrote, without explaining what connection you think there are between
what you say and what you suggest I think. However, I will say it again a
bit differently: Of course the people participating in the discussions,
those who package software, those who review licenses, all those people are
"Debian people". What those people do is actually what one could call
"living the DFSG". In contrast to this, your finalized proposal in form of
an interpretative guideline is dead wood and appears remote and detached to
me. A discussion if clause 3 of the DFSG applies to copyright notices on
our software even more so.
> > In this context, the only interesting thing we need to discuss is: what do
> > we do about non-technical, invariant sections that are not copyright notices
> > or license texts that apply to the work.
>
> It's been discussed to death. Some people want to be able to include
> megabytes upon megabytes of invariant non-technical sections in main.
> Others don't.
Do such people exist? I remember that always a certain amount of human
judgement was to be applied, and I have never seen anyone saying that he
actually wants to include megabytes of invariant non-technical sections.
Sure, there has been discussion, but so far no result has been determined.
However, a result to this question is greatly desired. Your guideline does
not address this issue at all. You claimed it would not affect any further
discussion about what else to include. I am not so sure this would be the
case, but let's assume it is. This would show clearly how uneffective
your interpretive guideline is: It does merely state what everybody agrees
upon anyway (but see below). We don't need an interpretive guideline for
that, it would be pure bureaucracy. However, we do need interpretations
for the open questions, where a consens is not yet determined.
> > Your proposal started out with an attempt to address this issue, and
> > was now narrowed down to a proposal that includes almost nothing at
> > all.
>
> I think it makes an important clarification. Some people seem to be
> wresting with the meaning of simple language like "we promise to keep
> the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free software" and "the
> license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them
> to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original
> software".
Sure, some people are sometimes a bit confused. Then it is explained to
them, and they usually understand. I don't see any substantial confusion
about this term to warrant the effort you are putting into it.
> My proposal is an acknowledgement of how the Debian Project actually
> applies the DFSG in practice.
This is only partly true. I have never seen a case where license text was
excluded from a package because it was not modificable and did not apply to
the included software. It just never happened, so there is no practice
about that.
The only thing your guideline tells us about our practice to apply the DFSG
is: We include copyright notices and licenses, even if they are not
modificable, and we don't include any other non-modificable licenses or
copyright notices (it also says we wouldn't include them if they existed,
but we don't know, see above). To any casual observer this is immediately
clear by just looking at what is in the archive, and I'd say that the five
nines (99.999%) would never ask themselve this questionn anyway, but just
take it for granted by common sense.
The truly interesting cases how we applied the DFSG are cases like KDE, the
older vim license, and many other software license issues, which were
actually worked out. When we have an idea how to treat GFDL'ed documents,
this will alsobe an instructive example of living the DFSG.
> It can also serve as a roadmap for how
> people may want to amend the DFSG in the future, if they strongly wish
> to see arbitrarily-sized exceptions to DFSG clause 3 in main.
Ok, then those people can look it up in the mailing list archive. This
purpose is at least potentially served now.
> There is only so much my interpretive guideline can do with the existing
> language of the DFSG. If you want to see more drastic action taken, you
> know how the Standard Resolution Procedure works.
I am not an action figurine, but yes, I know how it works.
I am willing to accept your interpretive guideline as what it is: Your
interpretive guideline. I even agree to half of it (that unmodificable
copyright notices and licenses that apply to the work are ok), but not to
the other half of it (that further unmodificable copyright notices and
licenses that do not apply to the work are not ok). As such, your
interpretive guideline is not even covering common ground, as minimalistic
as it is. Despite all the discussion that happened so far, we are only at
the very start of addressing the issue how to interpret the DFSG for
documentation to be included into Debian.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
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