Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Glenn Maynard writes:
>On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 12:55:58PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> <sigh> You're completely missing the point - I'm _not_ saying that the
>> disagreement should cause the GR. If we have a licensing issue that
>> needs deciding clearly, we need to involve the rest of the DDs in
>> making that decision. All the handwaving in the world on -legal won't
>> change that.
>
>You said "take that to a vote".  Votes to "tighten up and clarify" the
>DFSG certainly seem to mean GRs.  If that's not what you mean, say what
>you mean; please stop making me guess, and then getting exasperated when
>I do.

I thought I was being clear enough already, but clearly not. I'll
explain again:

There might be a case where we are seeing a common clause in licenses
where there is significant belief on -legal that it might make a
license non-free but it cannot be clearly, explicitly (unanimously?)
tied back to existing clauses in the DFSG. Current topical examples
would "choice of venue" and "clashes with some national laws".

After some discussion, if there is significant opinion here that such
a clause *is* non-free, a DFSG change should be proposed to make that
explicit. That way we can get the opinion and mandate of the general
population of DDs to *actually* *explicitly* claim that such clauses
are non-free. When something is in the DFSG, we have much more of a
case to make to upstream authors than "<foo> on debian-legal doesn't
like it.

I'm not saying that disagreement *itself* should cause a GR (as
somehow you seemed to believe I was saying). Do you understand me now?

>> >discussion very often leads to agreement.  (In practice, it's very
>> >rare for d-legal to not be able to reach a reasonable consensus on
>> >a real issue.)
>> 
>> *rotfl* Good joke. I suppose it depends on what you mean by
>> "consensus".
>
>(It's very clear, from this statement, that you have little experience with
>d-legal.)

Quite. As time goes on with me following -legal, I'm understanding
more and more why most DDs really have no inclination to pay any
attention at all to the pointless discussions that go on here. The
rest of Debian actually gets on with productive work...

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss