Re: Why we must ship at least some licenses (was: Manoj, ...
> However, the essential package that provides
> /usr/doc/copyright caould well live in the verbatim section. We
> should not compromise on our free license stance any more than we
> compromise on our free software stance.
I don't mind either way on this example, but if you follow this logic to it's
conclusion then most (or perhaps all) of the packages that contain their own
copyrights (rather then just referring to the GPL or whatever) will need to
be split into a main and verbatim package, where the verbatim package
contains just the copyright.
Now, while I can see your point of view, insisting on these packages being
split does seem to be rather worthless.
Especially since there is really no possibility of having DFSG free license,
since any DFSG license would be self-referential and I'm not convinced any of
the legal profession are going to put up with that sort of thing.
In the case of Standards, and in fact almost any other document than licenses,
I agree that the differentiation could well encourage people to use ``free''
licenses where otherwise they might not. I also think that this is a good
thing to encourage.
I really think any attempt to encourage people to use ``free'' but
unenforcible licenses is a total waste of our time, and if anyone were foolish
enough to take the hint and apply such a license to their software, then I
cannot see it doing either them or us any good.
I agree that a license taken in isolation from the software, might well be
considered as any other document, but when it is being used as a license it is
constrained to be legally enforcible, and any move on our part that reduces
the chances of an author choosing a legally enforcible license is a disservice
to the community.
Cheers, Phil.
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