Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?
On 5/13/05, Raul Miller <moth.debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
I apologize wholeheartedly for "apparently installed at the behest of
the FSF". I had no adequate basis for that claim, which appears on
further research to be false. In light of the contributions for which
you did originally earn a place on the technical committee, I agree
that it was derogatory and insulting and I am ashamed.
Otherwise, with the exception of the "Mouth of RMS" quip -- which, you
will note, came with a smiley, for what that's worth -- and my first
poorly edited response to your "tort" phantasm, which I immediately
acknowedged as over the top, I think the tone of my critiques has been
uniformly milder than yours. (Well, I have referred once or twice to
"crack-smoking contract interpretation", and once to "swatting flies
with a Howitzer (TM)", but you can hardly take that very seriously.)
Perhaps I would do best to let others assess the relative degrees of
derogatory here, as well as the substance of the grounds for
derogation.
> > 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.
Again, perhaps I will let others judge both your understanding and
emphatically your accuracy of quotation.
> > > 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.
If there are other specific statements which you found to be
insulting, please do let me know; it's possible that I have said
something else comparable to "behest of the FSF" for which a similar
apology is due.
> > > > 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.
Are you using it at all? Have you cited any case law in this entire
discourse, or given any indication that you have read the precedents
to which I have alluded, complete with convenient URLs? Are you even
pretending that your arguments have been informed by research using
FindLaw or any other source of references to the actual, historical
law?
> > > > 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.
Don't try to bullshit me here. That wasn't a discussion of
theoretical limits within the technical committee, that was a blatant
attempt to influence the outcome of a GR vote by raising the spectre
of FSF action against Debian. You implied that reproducibility of the
build environment was a factor in GPL compliance -- a statement
perhaps applicable to the LGPL (as I articulated in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/12/msg01753.html ) but
rather hard to construe in the GPL. And given the familiar tone of
your references to RMS, and other evidence of your affiliation easily
accessible to Google, I think I can be excused for reading it as
effectively a threat from the FSF in light of the practical effects of
the release manager's interpretation of the Social Contract GR.
I might add that the FSF can hardly prosecute such a claim against
Debian without looking thoroughly hypocritical -- and perhaps opening
themselves up further to allegations such as those made by Mr. Wallace
-- in light of their business practices with respect to Windows-based
cross-development environments such as Wind River's (not to mention
Apple's XCode -- good luck rebuilding that). Or, to leave GCC out of
it, the Windows build of GNU Emacs linked from
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html .
[snip references to the technical committee's theoretical role]
> 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.
My apologies again. That's something I shouldn't have said, not
having either first-hand knowledge or reasonable grounds to believe
it.
> 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.
Thread at http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/03/msg00093.html .
- Michael
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