Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Glenn Maynard writes:
>> 
>> The DFSG clearly needs to be tightened up and clarified, then. Or is
>> the point of debate on -legal simply to justify the existence of
>> -legal?
>
>If you're going to argue that the DFSG should be changed from a set of
>guidelines (which, by definition, require interpretation and human
>judgement to apply) into a definition, which can be implemented by
>robots, please say so.  You seem to think it's a bug that the DFSG
>doesn't have bright-line tests for every possible non-free requirement;
>such tests don't exist.

As time goes on and we get more consensus on what we consider free and
non-free, there should be more precedent set. In common cases, license
clauses and restrictions that we consider unambiguously to be non-free
should be marked as such in the DFSG. Otherwise we'll never make any
progress on these issues. I'm seriously beginning to wonder if people
debating licenses here actually _want_ there to be progress, or if the
debate _itself_ is the raison d'etre.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"This dress doesn't reverse." -- Alden Spiess