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Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?



On 5/13/05, Michael K. Edwards <m.k.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You've been rather consistently insulting for a number of days.
> 
> Oh, please.  Like you've been Mr. Clean.  You have been rude,
> sarcastic, and dismissive from the very first message you contributed
> to this discussion (
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00285.html ).  

I've been sarcastic, and dismissive of some arguments, but
I don't think I've been derogatory of people.

> You have at no time observed the punctilious standard of courtesy, of
> accuracy of quotation, and of acknowledgment of valid points with
> which I began, and which I maintained almost throughout our
> discussion.

That's because I am not aware of them.

You've provided quite a bit of text, but when I try and restate what you've
said in simpler form you've insisted that I am incorrect.

So, ok, I'm incorrect.  Me being incorrect doesn't mean that I understand
the valid parts of whatever it is you have to say.

> > Adam, at least, appears to think that insulting statements aren't
> > worth much of his time.
> 
> Insult has at no point been the primary purpose of any of my
> statements.  Had it been, I assure you that you would know that you
> had been insulted.

Perhaps you're unclear on something here:

I do, in fact, know that I have been insulted.

> > > Is this guy still chair of the technical committee?
> >
> > Ian Jackson is the chair of the technical committee.
> >
> > Here's how you could figure that out on your own:
> 
> Wow!  Raul can use Google!  You may be surprised to know that FindLaw
> works in much the same way and can be used to obtain the means for
> legal reasoning that stands a chance of being valid in a US
> jurisdiction.

I find that using google's search engine on findlaw's siet
gives me better results than using findlaw's iinterface to
google's engine.  If you think that means I'm using it
wrong, you're welcome to make suggestions.

> > > After his inane thinly veiled threats in
> > >  http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/04/msg00090.html ?
> >
> > You see attempts to resolve problems as threatening?
> 
> I see claims that glibc and GPL licensed parts of the toolchain might
> be undistributable without the sarge exception, coming from a member
> of the Technical Committee apparently installed at the behest of the
> FSF at the time that the Debian Constitution was first ratified, as
> thinly veiled threats.  Can you defend them on any other basis?

First off, legal issues are not technical issues, though they may
touch on some of the same points.

>From the technical committee point of view, the "glibc is distributed in 
binary" could only require intervention if the glibc maintainer were
in a dispute with other maintainers and they couldn't resolve it 
between themselves.  Even there, it's not guaranteed to be a salient
issue.

In essence, the technical committee only takes action when other
people have seriously messed up and are in conflict with each
other.  Experience has shown that it's better to warn people 
about potential problems (so they can start thinking about 
them and talking about them) than waiting for them to blow 
up into something that the committee needs to deal with.

If you want to find out more about how the technical committee works,
I highly recommend reading section 6 of the constitution.  Your talk
of "veiled threats" seems to me to indicate that you're not very
familiar with what the technical committee does, and doesn't do.

Also, the FSF has had nothing to do with me or my role
in Debian.  You're making that up.  Ian Jackson asked me
to join the committee and I accepted.  While I did not 
cross examine him about why he asked me to do so, I imagine
it was because he thought the kind of contributions I made, to 
the design of dpkg and to debian's packaging system were 
positive.

Finally, having a seat on the technical committee isn't exactly
a coveted role in the project.  Mostly you have to put up with
insults (and in that respect you're right -- yours have been
fairly mild), and occasionally you get to tackle a problem
that should never have happened.

-- 
Raul



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