Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
> > People without proper palladium licenses would not have the rights
> > required by the gpl.
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 09:18:28PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Why not?
Because palladium is a proprietary work, and it's more than just an OS.
I'll grant that if the changes were limited to what was required to get
the OS to support it, that would probably be distributable. But that's
not the kind of example I was proposing.
I was not proposing "make gcc work on that OS", I was proposing functional
modifications to GCC to make it integrate better with that environment.
As a rough idea, imagine if gcc were made to support special keywords or
control files to make it easier to build programs which use palladium's
proprietary encryption and digital rights management facilities object
model. Or, more generally, imagine any change which makes gcc into
something that works in a proprietary fashion.
> > > Yes, we do. That's the fundamental role of the Debian Free Software
> > > Guidelines. If you do not understand this, we have no common basis for
> > > communicating.
>
> > Quote the relevant text, please.
>
> I did. Here you quote my quote:
>
> > > Read the Social Contract: "Debian will remain 100% free". That is a
> > > promise, and the contents of that promise includes what I wrote.
That's not the same promise.
> > I disagree. 100% free means that we aren't going to be distributing
> > free software which depends on non-free software.
>
> 100% free first and foremost means that the software we distribute
> will itself be free.
And the DFSG was written to make that clear.
> > 100% free does not mean that we will require that all of our free
> > software be convertable into non-free software.
>
> No, and I have not said or implied so.
You said:
With the DFSG we promise to our users that they can take any software
in main and modify it for any purpose...
To make proprietary software is a purpose.
Why do you dispute this?
As an aside, it's probably worth noting that the BSD project(s) tend to
consider the ability to satisfy this purpose a very significant freedom
-- they value it highly. There are other projects which do not value
this purpose, and Debian is one of them, but that doesn't make it not
a purpose.
> > > Aha. However, if somebody manages to modify gcc such that it can
> > > nevertheless be used in that environment, then it is perfectly legal
> > > to distribute the modified gcc under the same terms as gcc itself.
>
> > Not if this means that making copies of the derived work is forbidden
> > by the gpl.
>
> Making copies of the derived work is *not* forbidden by the GPL.
You mean because it's outside the scope of the GPL? After all, the
GPL says:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope.
Oh, wait, it talks about copying there... hmm...
Oh well, you must be right. After all, you said so. And you used
asterisks.
--
Raul
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