Re: Request for GR: clarifying the license text licensing / freeness issue

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 12:37:16PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > License texts *are* distributed by Debian, now, under terms that
> > are non-free. This behaviour doesn't match the Social Contract.
>
> Sure, they are technically being distributed, but not as something
> the social contract cares about. (Pardon the personification.)

Then we come again to the point of this discussion.

The Social Contract makes a promise we are not keeping. You say it's
"not ... something the social contract cares about". That's not at all
clear from reading it -- the social contract makes a straightforward
promise, which has no exception for this, yet we're acting as though
such an exception were there.

Only by reading a thread like this, or some other discussion which has
no obvious connection from the Social Contract, can newcomers learn
this exception under which we act. That's what the proposed GR is
seeking to rectify.

-- 
 \     "I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then |
  `\        I thought 'Why should I? He never reads any of mine.'"  -- |
_o__)                                                   Spike Milligan |
Ben Finney