Re: Debian Weekly News - August 19th, 2003
On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 04:47:29PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > 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.
Well, I am not among them. I think software standards could be modified to
make them better applicable to non-software items, and I am not advocating
that for the purpose of relaxing standards for non-software items.
> > 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 think you may have hit the crux of the disagreement there, though I would
call my own definition of software concrete rather than metaphysical.
I think that software is software, and if I pick up an Emacs manual or the
bat book, I'm not going to think it's software. I think that contextual
approach ultimately leads to greater confusion, and that we should instead
spell out exactly what we mean without having to use definitions that nobody
else does.
> > 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.
True enough, but they're going to have trouble no matter how this turns out.
> > > 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?
I agree with your statement.
> > 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.
Again, I agree.
> > > 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. :)
Just as long as you don't say "let's discuss this at /dev/null"....
> > > 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.
Not everyone is such the topic cop as you :-)
> > 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.
Well, I'll go on record now and state that I do not favor the FDL and do not
favor efforts to weaken the requirements of main by adjusting them to permit
non-free documentation licenses.
> 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.)
I agree.
> Perhaps you'd care to re-launch your proposition in this forum, however.
I have actually seen some very nice looking documentation guidelines pop up
on -legal, so it looks like some have taken the ball and run with it, which
as far as I'm concerned, is great. I have 118 messages to catch up on that
list though (plus the links you gave me).
-- John
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