On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:28:02PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: > On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:33:00PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > Just FYI, I share your feelings. I think 2c is the worst wart on the > > GNU GPL. > > Agreed. > > > Unfortunately, I strongly suspect the FSF is interested in having more > > warts like this in GNU GPL v3, not fewer. > > I've seen you mention this before in this thread and must say it sounds > alarming. Could you provide some background and references to back up that > suspicion? I'd rather have solid facts to back up my FUD :-) It's the result of some informal, oral conversations with some people at the FSF. As a result: 1) I can't remember which things I've been told in confidence; 2) I don't wish to violate the confidences of these people, whom I like and respect; 3) Direct, formal requests for more information about future plans are known to have gone answered by the FSF (recall the GNU FDL 1.2 draft situation); 4) I still need some avenue for attempting to draw attention to what I would perceive as missteps that I on the part of the FSF. Hopefully you can understand my predicament. I'd really like to see more in the way of round-table discussions between the FSF and the Debian Project, especially since I feel that philosophically we have far more similarities than differences. > In any case, has anyone advocated fewer rather than more warts to the powers > that be at FSF? I haven't yet figured out a good strategy for this. I don't think it would be good for the Debian Project to send the FSF any ultimatums about future revisions we won't accept. At the same time we can't afford to be blindsided by license changes which we'd consider unacceptable; any maybe the FSF can't afford that, either; I don't know how important Debian is to them as an ally and a friendly distributor of their work. If elected DPL, I will likely be making overtures to the FSF -- perhaps we could each delegate an "ambassador" to the other organization. Also, I think it's about time we made up our minds one way or the other about the GNU FDL. The latter is an issue that we need to resolve internally first. All of the above is one reason I'm very happy to have Mr. Turner on this list. -- G. Branden Robinson | No math genius, eh? Then perhaps Debian GNU/Linux | you could explain to me where you branden@debian.org | got these... PENROSE TILES! http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Stephen R. Notley
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