Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 03:00:56PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> My goal is to maintain Debian's standards of freedom at the point that
>> they are and where I believe they should be. You believe that those
> 
> And in order to do so, you're labelling everyone with an opinion
> different from yours "extremists", trying to get them ignored, and
> telling them not to argue their position. [1]

Nonsense. I believe that people who fundamentally disagree with chunks
of the DFSG are extremists compared to the rest of Debian. That doesn't
imply that I feel that way about everyone I disagree with.

>> standards should be in a different place. Given the fundamental
>> difference in viewpoint, I'm not convinced either of us is ever going to
>> convince the other of anything of significance.
> 
> Convincing the other isn't important; what matters is whether Brian's
> arguments convince the rest of the project, or whether your counterarguments
> prevent them from doing so.  The fact that you're favoring ad hominem
> so frequently recently suggests to me, at least, that you don't trust
> your real arguments to do so.

What matters is that certain arguments voiced in debian-legal reduce the
credibility of debian-legal, and that has a negative impact on the
project as a whole.

>> Exactly. It's a common standard of freedom that we all (theoretically)
>> agree to, despite it not necessarily being in exactly the right place
>> from a personal point of view. Except...
> 
> DD's agree to uphold it, not to agree with it.  If they had to agree to it,
> nobody would ever be able to propose functional changes to it.  You can't
> agree to agree to something; individual opinions change over time, and you
> simply can't agree to maintain an opinion.  You can easily agree to uphold
> something, though, even if there are details that you don't entirely agree
> with.

Gah. "Agree to for the purposes of doing stuff within Debian". And
that's not the case here - 'In my opinion (not the DFSG's, at present,
per the exception), patch clauses are not free at all.  As a result, I
have a difficult time arguing the topic "are patch clauses free with an
added 'you must allow incorporation' requirement?", because my mind is
shouting "but patch clauses aren't even free on their own!"'[1] suggests
that you're not doing that. You're letting your opinions about the
validity of certain aspects of the DFSG influence your opinions about
whether a license is free or not.

> Saying "you can't hold that opinion!  You promised you wouldn't!" is
> ridiculous, and expecting people to promise to maintain an opinion is
> insane.

As I've said before, I believe that arguments regarding the freeness or
otherwise of a license should be founded upon the DFSG. How can you
honestly do that when you disagree with fundamental aspects of them?

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/08/msg00535.html

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org