Re: OSD && DFSG - different purposes

[Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>]

Glenn Maynard writes:
 > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00448.html

Thanks.

 > > Why not change the DFSG?
 > 
 > There have been several good reasons explained for leaving the DFSG as a
 > set of human guidelines, rather than a word-strict block of legalese that
 > attempts to remove all human judgement from the equation.

I'm not saying that it's possible to remove all human judgement.  If
it were ever possible to do that, then we could put judges out of
business.  It *is* possible, though, to change the DFSG to cause it to 
more closely resemble the case law that debian-legal has developed.

The problem with relying on human judgement is that it can be
arbitrary.  If Microsoft came to Debian and said "Would you accept
this software licensed under the Microsoft Public License?" would you
be able to make a judgement which is not only not arbitrary, but which 
could be *seen* to be non-arbitrary?  If you want to make judgements
on things which aren't in the DFSG, how can you not be seen as
arbitrary?

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