A summary, if an opinionated one
This summary won't be as professional looking as Manoj's are, but I want
to condense a few points:
1) Free standards are desirable
We seem to more or less all agree on this.
2) Non-free, but still distributable standards, should be distributed
The value to debian of including the standards it follows is high. It
outweighs their non-freeness. This is in some sense analogous to the PGP
situation. The value of PGP outweighs its non-freeness, but we will
switch to GPG soon. Similarly, if and when free standards emerge which
replace our non-free ones, we will switch.
3) Free licenses are desirable
Although there are some protections in law, in some countries (possibly
all) which allow derived licenses in some way, there seems to be no reason
not to make this explicit. Therefore, we should encourage free licenses.
Perhaps we should try to persuade RMS that GPL3 should be free.
4) We *must* distribute licenses with our software
So non-free licenses are going to be in main, to the extent that they
accompany software.
So, I see a clear similarity between the two situations. And I suggest
that standards which are non-free do not go into main, but go somewhere
else, yet to be determined.
We must now, IMO, consider the issue of 'free content', and whether or not
debian distributes what I shall call 'works of art', and if so, in which
section.
Regards,
Jules
/----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\
| Jelibean aka | jules@jellybean.co.uk | 6 Evelyn Rd |
| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
+----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+
| War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. |
| When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. |
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