Re: Respect for Upstream Authors and Snippets of Interest
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On Saturday 27 September 2003 03:31, Barak Pearlmutter wrote:
> Debian has a longstanding practice of respect for upstream authors.
> For instance, if the author of a GPLed program includes a statement in
> a README "please if you like this program I'd very much appreciate it
> if you sent me $10", we do not remove such a statement. We even
> include offers by the author to sell the right to include the code in
> a proprietary program. To my knowledge, in all the many thousands of
> packages in Debian, such statements have never been removed! Even
> though Debian might find such an offer repulsive, we respect our
> upstream authors enough to include them.
Fair enough. However, all of these statements are removable, and their
modification is probably not prohibited by the license.
> People who say that such snippets have no place in Debian, and
> constitute violations of the DFSG, are attempting to impose a very
>
> "foolish consistency". And Jan Schumacher's statement:
> > A /non-modifiable/ text could not be included in Debian, a
> > /modifiable/ one would most likely be.
>
> is a load of hooey. Inclusion of snippets is not a violation of the
> DFSG. Such an overly-literal interpretation of the rules is precisely
> why we call them D-F-S-***GUIDELINES***! Because we use common sense
> in their application.
That is what (I hope) all participants are doing. I don't think, though, that
we have been talking about little snippets, exactly. Do you believe
unmodifiable essays like the GNU Manifesto could be accepted in Debian with
the DFSG as they stand?
Regards
Jan
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