Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.
On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 01:09:54AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> While I appreciate your honesty, It's not entirely clear to me that an
> excessively hardline viewpoint on the DFSG should be any more acceptable
> than an excessively liberal one. We're happy to discount the opinions of
> people who don't see the need for various DFSG clauses because they want
> to get more material into Debian - why should we be any happier to
> listen to people who disagree with the DFSG in the opposite direction?
My argument against "patch clauses with additional restrictions on the
patches" is not in conflict with DFSG#4. I believe it's a completely
reasonable interpretation that while DFSG#4 allows patch clauses, it does
not allow patch clauses with yet more stipulations on how those patches can
be distributed, as the QPL's does.
I've given an argument of why it shouldn't, and I have seen no argument of
why it should.
> Regardless of whether you like it or not, the DFSG embodies the things
> that Debian developers have agreed to accept as free. If you disagree
> with the DFSG, then your efforts would probably be better spent on
> trying to get Debian to change them rather than argue about licenses
> that you believe are non-free anyway.
The DFSG doesn't say that patch clauses with even more onerous restrictions
attached are free, and I don't see any reason to think that Debian
developers have agreed to that.
> More bluntly - if you disagree with the DFSG then I don't think you
> should be attempting to influence decisions regarding which licenses
> satisfy them.
You can disagree with my arguments and my reasoning, but claiming that I
shouldn't be on the list--which is what you just did--because I think the
DFSG is imperfect and needs some fixing is insane. I'm hardly the only
person that thinks DFSG#4 needs fixing. I'd hope few people here find
"your argument is invalid because of your opinion" convincing.
--
Glenn Maynard
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