Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> wrote:
> Walter Landry writes:
> >
> >In general, I find this complaining about debian-legal to be
> >misplaced.  It is as if people started complaining that the french
> >localization list came up with a french style guide without
> >"consulting" anyone (oh, and they use this strange terminology called
> >"French" to discuss things).  If you are interested in french style
> >guides, then that is the obvious place to go.  Similarly, if you are
> >interested in legal issues, then you go to debian-legal.
> 
> Hmmm. That's a bogus example. The French localisation list would not
> generally claim that they were making decisions that would affect the
> entirety of Debian, whereas licensing decisions _definitely_
> do.

You must have missed this flamewar

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/05/msg00764.html

It certainly looks like a style guide can affect every package.

> debian-legal also tends to be full of pedantic arguments about precise
> meanings of words and clauses (inevitable due to the legalese
> involved, I suppose) which makes the discussions here very difficult
> to join without a very large amount of context/archive
> reading/whatever.

Here you're complaining that legal analysis is hard...

> Add in posturing and bogus summaries and claims of consensus, and
> it's easy to see why lots of DDs don't even bother trying to take
> part any more.

and here you're complaining about behavior found in almost every
debian list.  I'm not sure that there is anything that can be done
about those things.

> For -legal discussions to gain general backing and support, we need
> to make the much more accessible. Updates to the DFSG are one thing
> I'd like to see to streamline some of the discussion;

I'm not too keen on having to modify the DFSG everytime someone comes
up with a novel way of restricting freedom.  I'm more inclined to not
accept new restrictions unless they are substantially similar to
restrictions already in wide usage for software in main.

> maybe an _objective_ weekly/monthly summary of discussions would
> help too.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu