Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 08:02:30PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 05:56:16PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 06:27:36PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> > > I find 80% to be pretty clear. I guess you're one of the people claiming
> > > that there's a silent majority secretly disagreeing with the vast majority
> > > of d-legal (who can't be bothered to state their opinion and its rationale),
> > > so there's no point in arguing this further.
> >
> > Way to ignore what I actually wrote. What I said was that most DD's aren't
> > aware of the issue, which is very different than silent disagreement. DD's
> > have universally agreed to uphold the DFSG, not some additional material that's
> > grounded in one interpretation of the DFSG. As a result, I'd bet that many
> > would be surprised when a license is declared non-free because of something
> > that they did not agree to.
>
> Your argument could be applied by one disagreeing with any nontrivial d-legal
> consensus at all--and even trivial ones, like "'can only distribute on
> Thursday' is non-free"[1]. It's an argument that d-legal consensus is
> meaningless; I don't believe that d-legal consensus is actually so distinct
> from the informed opinions of the rest of the project.
>
> If it was, and the project as a whole really did agree that the things
> being argued recently--choice of venue, license-termination-at-my-slightest-
> whim, forced distribution to upstream on demand, forced archival of source
> for years (GPL#3b without 3a), forced smiling on distribution[2]--are free,
> I'd probably throw in the towel and give up trying to keep Debian free, because
> the project would have drifted so far from my concept of Freedom as to make
> it a futile effort. The "but the entire project wasn't consulted!" argument
> could be applied to all of those.
You sound like you don't actually want to discuss these things, despite
previously claiming that you do. Make up your mind. I'm not saying consult the
rest of the project on every little decision, but applying dogmatic
interpretations of the DFSG is a big decision, and this *needs* to be
communicated to the rest of the project. The various tests, controversial
interpretations like choice of venue, etc. These are not definitively
demostrable within the DFSG.
> If you have practical suggestions, let's hear them; otherwise this just isn't
> interesting.
1) MJ Ray has suggested doing more work with people in the NM queue. I agree
with this. When I went through P&P, the Desert Island Test was alluded to, but
the rationale was never explained. The other tests didn't come up, iirc.
2) Steve McIntyre has continually suggested codifying the various things in the
DFSG. I fully agree with this. If you really truly believe that your
interpretations are shared by the rest of the project, then you have nothing to
fear from this, and you only stand to gain.
3) As I stated earlier, I liked the news post to DWN. Keep those up for big
things like new tests and interesting new interpretations.
4) Announce major changes to things to -devel-announce. If a major license is
declared as non-free, announce it to -devel or -devel-announce (maybe the
-devel first in order to allow dissenters to weigh in before going for the
broader -devel-announce).
5) Possibly start -legal-announce for summaries and such
Hopefully those are good starting points for you. My goal isn't to tear down or
break consensus, but to bring some sort of peace and compromise. If you don't
like this and would rather rant and talk in circles, then I'm not the man to be
posting to this list. If you like any of these ideas, let me know and I can try
to help implement them.
- David Nusinow
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