Re: Request for GR: clarifying the license text licensing / freeness issue
On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 08:07:03AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> 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.
The social contract is not making any exceptions; the law of the land is.
It goes without saying that we will be applying the copyright law to our
stuff; should we explicate the fact that we do that, just in case someone
thinks that by implicitly abiding by the copyright law we're doing something
Wrong(TM)?
What else do we have to account for? Maybe talk about how developer time is
not free and it's possible for it to shrink to zero one day, invalidating
the whole deal. Maybe talk about how we can easily be derelict in
communicating with upstream. Maybe talk about hiding some of the stuff we
get at the BTS because it's marked by anti-spam filters. Talk about the
delay in publishing data from the BTS because the computers are not
infinitely fast. Hey, the fourth clause is very general, let's dissect that
one, too - let's explicate how all volunteers have a mind of their own and
each has the option of prioritizing differently, even if slightly. Sometimes
there will be computing environments which we think we can't adjust to -
let's say so clearly. What if we fail to provide an integrated system of
high-quality materials? Let's put the fact that we may be carrying lower
quality materials up front.
We could go on and on, stating all those promises we are not keeping.
(We should really be having an existential crisis by now...)
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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