Re: Social Contract: Practical Implications
> On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 10:25:43AM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> > Nor does it say "all derived works".
On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 04:24:51PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> You're free to offer alternate interpretations, but showing that they're
> valid interpretations does not make them Debian's interpretation, which
> is the one that holds. :)
And the Debian interpretation is that works distributed under the GPL
(and a number of other licenses) satisfy the DFSG.
> > If people are going to nit pick about the meaning of the DFSG, why not
> > nit pick about the meanings of the words in the DFSG?
>
> You're the one nit picking, focusing on the word "program" :)
However, I was not the one who said:
"I do not see why license texts should be exempt from the current DFSG."
I do see a reason why, and pointed out what I saw. Licenses are primarily
significant for legal reasons.
> Again, if we read "program" in the DFSG to mean anything but "software",
> it's suddenly making most of the DFSG apply only to programs, which is
> completely ignoring the results of the GR.
You mean the GR which was supposed to clarify the Social Contract?
> I believe it is very clear, based on that GR, that Debian is to use
> the DFSG--not just the two clauses that don't use the word "program"--to
> judge freeness of all software.
I don't remember the discussion about how Debian needed to change its
fundamental approach to everything. Do you have some other basis for
this statement?
Also, "two clauses"? Which two are those? About half the clauses are
not specific to programs. One of those (clause 9) explicitly uses an
example involving programs, but is not restricted to programs.
For that matter, all the clauses which mention "programs" can be used as
examples indicating roughly what we are trying to accomplish. That said,
the clauses that don't mention source code are probably more generally
applicable to non-programs than the clauses which do.
But a rough example isn't anything to nitpick on. It's certainly not
something to exclude license texts (such as the GPL) on.
> (You might assert that people voting for the change actually meant that all
> software should be judged under the DFSG, but only two clauses of the DFSG
> clearly apply to non-programs; but I reject that assertion, as you're one
> of the few that has ever even suggested it.)
This paragraph, to me, looks like you're objecting to the person talking
rather than the words being said.
--
Raul
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