Re: [Discussioni] OSD && DFSG convergence
Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> writes:
> Henning Makholm writes:
> > Scripsit Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
> >
> > > This seems to be a sticking point with a lot of people. Essentially,
> > > everyone seems to be defending their right to arbitrarily exclude
> > > software from Debian. But that is a right you don't have.
> >
> > We sure do have.
>
> No, you don't.
Care to elaborate? I don't like arbitrary exclusions but what prevents
us from doing so? (When you say "right" here, do you mean moral, legal
or what sort of right?)
> > However, the *only* ill that could befall Debian for arbitrarily
> > excluding something is that some of our users will be disappointed with
> > not having it, and that they will start using another OS if it
> > disappoints them enough.
>
> You agree with me, I see.
Please do not put words in other people's mouths. We have the right to
disappoint users and sometimes we have to. (Usually with some good
reason, though, like license or legal problems.)
> > Nobody can sue us for not including their favorite software. Nobody
> > can sue us for not including software they wrote.
>
> Guess what, Henning: anybody can sue anybody for anything anytime
> anywhere (where "anywhere" is defined as any free country).
Ever heard of the legal term "frivolous"? Of course I can sue Debian
to change their logo because I don't like it, or I can sue a certain
maintainer because he uploaded a package with compiler options I don't
like. Fortunately, judges would just laugh at this and dismiss it. So
please make your point more clear here.
> > It seems that most of the debian-legal regulars have decided for
> > themselves that, sure there are things that might be said clearer, but
> > it's not broken enough to turn the Constitution upside down to fix it.
>
> And yet, you're doing that right now. One cannot rely on the language
> of the DFSG to decide if something is DFSG-free. One must apply to an
> elite cabal of Debian members who are completely unaccountable and
> may decide anything they wish. (Assuming of course that you're
> correct about your ability to be arbitrary, which I contend you are
> not).
The process is quite transparent, and discussion on -legal is not
confined to the cabal. (The final decision is a different matter...)
> And you think that's not a broken process?
No, it has its problems but it works quite well, and does not produce
"arbitrary decisions".
> > But what you actually seem to say is: We have these two documents that
> > except for a few places are identical; please make a lot of changes to
> > yours so that we can have them "converge". That doesn't make much
> > sense to me,
>
> Would you rather have the current state of affairs, where one group of
> free software developers says the RPSL is a free software license, and
> another says it's not a free software license? I can't imagine
> anybody would think that's a good thing.
Deal with it, the world is cruel. Furthermore, what about the third
group, the FSF? Now there are three different opinions about whether
something is free or not. What is so terrible about that?
Lukas
P.S.: I don't object to clarification of the DFSG at some points,
e.g. click-wrap licenses and such, maybe explicitly mentioning PD
etc. However, I consider this of relatively minor importance.
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