On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 08:53:24AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > I always use "g" to respond to mailing list posts in mutt. That's not a good practice. It will send private replies to people who don't want them. Use "L" instead. If that doesn't work, you need to use the "subscribe" and "lists" commands in your .muttrc. See /usr/share/doc/mutt/. > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200112/msg00027.html > > > > "The Social Contract does not say: Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software > > and Some Other Things That Aren't Software But Which Are Also Free But > > Meet a Different Definition Of Free Than That Which Applies to Software, > > Plus Some Other Stuff That Isn't Free By Any Stretch Of The Imagination > > But Which We Thought Would Be Nice To Have." > > Which is an interesting post indeed, though I think that particular quote is > taking things to an unwarranted extreme. It's precisely what certain agitators on debian-legal appear to be pursuing. > Then I don't understand. Why do you continue bringing up the "100% Free > Software" if not to assert that everything in Debian is Free Software, and > thus the DFSG applies? Because I have a contextal, operational definition of "software" vis-a-vis the Social Contract and DFSG, not a metaphysical or ontological one. > > I'm also getting tired of you not familiarizing yourself with the > > voluminous past discussions of this subject. > > Sifting through two or three years of debian-legal archives on this topic > especially is not something that is easily or quickly done/ I have given you some pointers in another thread. > Well, the Social Contract doesn't specifically address it, but I'd say we > have a pretty clear idea of what we want to do anyway. I'm not sure I agree. Some people seem to have a *lot* of trouble getting the intent of the Social Contract through their heads. > Quite possible (I've not been on debian-legal the entire time it existed), > and thanks for pointing it out, However, there doesn't seem to have been a > conclusion reached. For instance, there is this reply: > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200112/msg00024.html > > But, like Thomas, by this point I think it may be time to agree to disagree. It may be worth noting that Thomas has changed his mind at least with respect to the GNU FDL. Whether that affected his views on the "documentation as software" meta-discussion, I don't know. > > Everything we possibly can ensure to be Free in Debian must be Free. > > Yup, I'd agree with that as a worthy goal. > > > That means everything except legal notices (copyright notices, license > > terms, warranty disclaimers, and the like). > > That too. You mean you agree with my statement, or that "that too" must also be Free? > > We could do without that stuff as well, except we'd either expose > > ourselves to legal liability, or be left only with public domain > > materials. Either would mean there wouldn't be a Debian Project for > > much longer. > > Agreed. > > > I guess at this point you can, if you like, argue that losing the GNU > > Emacs Manual, with its inseparable GNU Manifesto, would deal the Project > > an equally fatal blow. > > That is not my argument, and as you are probably aware, I have agreed that > the GFDL is not a good license. On -legal, I'm much less concerned with whether or not the GNU FDL is a "good" license than with whether one can easily have a DFSG-free work licensed under its terms. In my opinion, and in the apparent opinon of a lot of other people, that's a difficult proposition. > > It's a discussion of the Social Contract, for which the correct forum is > > debian-project. > > Fine, I don't care where the discussion is. Other people do. :) > > This is not a technical discussion. Please stop grandstanding on > > debian-devel. > > I was not "grandstanding" anywhere, nor did I begin the thread in -devel. You didn't begin it there, but you should have known better than to contribute to it there. > I was responding to your post at > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200308/msg03193.html, > which among other things appeared to assert that everything in Debian is > software, and that I am "willing to compromise the freedoms of their fellow > developers and our users". That I objected to strongly, as it is most > certainly not the case, nor has it ever been for me. Tactically, I'd suggest that now is not the best time, and -legal is not the right place, to address the matter that concerns you. There are people on -legal who will count you as an ally, as a representative of a "silent majority" which believes we should have as much GNU FDL-licensed stuff in main as possible. It is my hope that those people can be LARTed into submission on -legal, as there is no evidence to support their "silent majority" hypotheses. (In fact, I suspect that all "silent majority" claims are unfalsifiable by definition.) Perhaps you'd care to re-launch your proposition in this forum, however. -- G. Branden Robinson | I have a truly elegant proof of the Debian GNU/Linux | above, but it is too long to fit branden@debian.org | into this .signature file. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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