Re: OSD && DFSG - a conclusion

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

At Fri, 31 Jan 2003 17:54:43 -0500,
Sam Hartman wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "Philip" == Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> writes:
> 
>     Philip> Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> writes:
>     >> I don't want this discussion to drag on forever, going round
>     >> and round, covering the same ground, beating a dead horse, and
>     >> overusing cliches and stock phrases.  It sure looks like
>     >> there's sufficient interest in the idea of evolving the OSD &&
>     >> DFSG in a common direction, and maybe even making them the same
>     >> document.
> 
>     Philip> Really?
> 
>     Philip> I just read the whole thread, and the only person that
>     Philip> seemed to be advancing that idea was you.
> 
> I didn't advance that idea on list but actually think that it could be
> a good idea to clarify bugs in the DFSG.

Ah, that's a different thing.

Bug fixing the DFSG is unlikely to result in changes in the list of
qualifying licenses.  I think we have the list of approved licenses
right at present, so if there are ambiguities in the DFSG that can be
clarified to reinforce the criteria we are _already_ applying, I would
support that too, and I would expect that most of Debian would.

I am concerned that convergence between the OSD & the DFSG is a Trojan
Horse designed to sneak a few licenses (i.e. the APSL) into Debian
that we currently rightly reject.

The OSD and the DFSG are pretty much exactly the same already, and yet
OSI and Debian use those criteria to come to different conclusions.

I don't see what benefit Debian would gain from diluting our standards
in order to accommodate the OSI.

If OSI wants to adopt our list of acceptable licenses, fine.  If they
have problems with our decisions on specific licenses, then I suppose
they should try to persuade this list that it made a mistake, but I
don't see the point of muddying the waters by talking about
convergence between two documents, when it wasn't the differences in
those documents that resulted in the different decisions.

> I think it would be a lot of effort and don't want to lead that
> effort, but if someone does want to lead that effort and spend the
> necessary time I would not want to stand in their way.

I don't think that it's overly broken, to be honest.  Are there any
licenses in or out of Debian, in error, due to bugs in the DFSG?  OK,
so ambiguities might provoke longer flame-wars than we might prefer,
but if the final result is correct, then it's not that serious a bug.

> I do think it is important that whoever leads that effort be a member
> of the Debian community not an outsider.

Quite.

Cheers, Phil.