Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> 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.
With the exception of smiling (and possibly the license termination
stuff), the FSF believes that these things are all free. Now, the FSF
are hardly noted for being moderates when it comes to software freedom
(as distinct from RMS's opinions on the necessary freedoms in
documentation). If we are going to hold stronger opinions than the FSF,
we need to think about how to justify these opinions to the community at
large. There's a world outside Debian, and Debian looking like
holier-than-Stallman fanatics doesn't further anyone. And, rightly or
wrongly, that's how we're currently appearing.
If we do want to hold these opinions, we need to show why they're
important. Corner cases of badness aren't convincing in themselves - we
need to show why protecting those corner cases is important. We're
really not doing that at the moment.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
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