Re: independent.nu - DFSG compatible?
On Saturday 27 September 2008 05:54:02 pm Don Armstrong wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:
> >
> > > The key words here are what "totally free" means, and what "use"
> > > means. If "totally free" means "you have the freedom to do anything
> > > you wish with these works" then that's a different meaning entirely
> > > than "you don't have to pay for these works".
> >
> > Given the subsequent "This means [use for any purpose]" language, I
> > think "free as in beer" is unlikely (though we'd need a confirmation
> > of that).
>
> The problem is that we're working off of a translation without any
> information as to what the underlying words that were translated
> actually mean. There's not a one-to-one mapping between languages.
Which is certainly a fair point... but I'm thinking the initial poster is a native speaker, and isn't going to insert terms like "rights" into sentences that is talking about costs. That's a fairly outstanding translation mistake. Also, that second sentence would have to be essentially made-up if the first sentence is really talking about money. Yes, the English language has its ambiguities, but a little attention to context is adequate in most situations.
-Sean
--
Sean Kellogg
e: skellogg@gmail.com
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