Re: Knuth statement on renaming cm files and Licence violation.
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
> The arguments that have been presented that say that requiring file
> renaming is an infringment on the freedoms guaranteed by the DFSG are
> certainly reasonable ones and I can find much in them to agree with, but
> the DFSG really *aren't* clear on this point, and a ruling on the subject
> does not just obviously fall out of what's already there.
DFSG says that you have to permit modification. (By patches or
directly.) That is violated by a rule like "if you modify this, you
must chant the kama sutra" or "if you modify this, you cannot name the
output file foo.bar". The reason the latter is crucial is because it
is an *operational* matter for the software, changing such things as
APIs is exactly why we want the right to modify files.
> (As an aside, once Debian reaches some sort of general conclusion on this,
> it would be really nice to add that to either the DFSG or some supporting
> material, since this has come up repeatedly for years and this exact
> argument happens every time.)
Eww, no. The current method is actually better. It takes time and
patience, but the result is an ever-growing cadre of people who have
thought it out and talked about it, and so much more deeply understand
it than if they just read it in some document.
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