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Re: handling Mozilla with kid gloves [was: GUADEC report]



On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:19:33PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader wrote:
> * Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> [2004-07-12 02:46]:
> > IMO it would have helped if a Debian license arbitration body had been
> > formally delegated by the DPL, but as we all know, that didn't happen.
> 
> It's interesting that you say that, Mr Robinson.  Last time I
> suggested that -legal should engage in more active arbitration with
> upstream (for which I'd happily have a delegate) you told me that this
> is not the task of -legal.  Also, I encouraged summarizing and
> documenting the findings of -legal about licenses and agreed that we
> can appoint a delegate if that's useful and once it's clear who would
> be a good candidate for that.

Would you kindly let me know whether you intend to retract the above snarky
personal attack, issued in your formal capacity as Debian Project Leader
and grounded upon a questionable recollection of the facts, given that even
after nearly 6 months you have not bothered to reply to either of my
follow-ups (quoted below)?

I could assume that your answer is "no", but that would be ungenerous.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:10:57PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 10:19:33PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader wrote:
> > * Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> [2004-07-12 02:46]:
> > > IMO it would have helped if a Debian license arbitration body had been
> > > formally delegated by the DPL, but as we all know, that didn't happen.
> 
> > It's interesting that you say that, Mr Robinson.  Last time I
> > suggested that -legal should engage in more active arbitration with
> > upstream (for which I'd happily have a delegate)
> 
> Where precisely did you make this suggestion?  Here's what I can find:
> 
> On 24 January, Daniel Quinlan proposed to -legal a protocol for a formal
> license review process, of which the salient points were 1) a submission
> queue [not debian-legal itself] for all license review requests; 2)
> forwarding of requests to -legal for discussion; 3) an official entity
> [delegate(s)?] which drafts a response reflecting the consensus of the
> list; 4) final response to be sent with in 30 days of submission to the
> queue.[1]
> 
> You replied a couple of weeks later[2], asserting that his suggestion "[had]
> merit", but "[had] to be done in a way which is compatible with how -legal
> works." You exhorted debian-legal to prepare summaries (which we have), and
> "explicitly talk to people creating licenses to make sure they get it right",
> we which we either haven't had a chance to do[3], or have already done[4].
> 
> You did not use the words "delegate" or "official", nor anything synonymous
> as far as I can tell, in your reply to Mr. Quinlan.  Instead, at the end of
> the message, you emphasized that you would not be taking immediate action:
> 
>   I'd like to hear what other people from -legal think.  I'm certainly
>   not going to appoint anyone without the consent of -legal since this
>   is just not the way it can work.  But perhaps we can find a solution
>   together.
> 
> > you told me that this is not the task of -legal.
> 
> I did?  Where did I do that?  Not only did I not reply to your messages to
> debian-legal in that thread[5], I didn't post to the thread at all.  (It
> seemed to be doing just fine without me.)  In fact, as far as I can
> determine, if you and I have communicated on this subject, we haven't done
> it on the debian-legal mailing list[6].  Of the nine messages you've sent
> me privately this year, none of have been on this subject.
> 
> So that you'll surmise less and understand more about what I think, here's
> my opinion: debian-legal is a discussion list, and that's what it does
> best.  It discusses.  I think that, as DPL, you'd be best advised to draw
> any delegates on licensing issues from the pool of respected participants
> on the debian-legal list; they are more likely to be informed, be
> interested, and have the respect of their peers.
> 
> Furthermore, back in 2001, I called for such a body in my platform for
> Debian Project Leader[7].  I said:
> 
>   Just as Debian has a Technical Committee, I'd like to see a body of
>   legally-minded people formed who are prepared to give this[sic] issues
>   the kind of scrutiny they deserve.  As with the Technical Committee, of
>   course, their decisions could be overridden by a General Resolution of
>   the developers.  The point is to get a formal structure in place for
>   handing issues like this that don't require General Resolutions in and of
>   themselves.  GR's are a very weighty process, and where decisions of this
>   nature can be made, it is good to have a mechanism for making them.
> 
> At the time, though, I did not anticipate needing to use such a body much for
> resolving questions of license interpretation -- I thought the body would
> be needed more for interpreting the Constitution, thinking through
> amendments to our GR process carefully, and so forth.  The past three years
> have changed my estimation of the relative significance of licensing issues
> to the Project as a whole.
> 
> > Also, I encouraged summarizing and documenting the findings of -legal
> > about licenses
> 
> Yes, you did, and the list has done so[A][B][C][D][E]; we take a much more
> structured approach now.  Credit where credit is due: Daniel Quinlan
> proposed this process; Matthew Palmer, Henning Makholm, Anthony DeRobertis,
> MJ Ray, Don Armstrong, Nathanael Nerode, Simon Law, Joe Moore, Giacomo A.
> Catenazzi, Mahesh T. Pai, Jeremy Hankins, and you participated in the
> discussion.
> 
> > and agreed that we can appoint a delegate if that's useful and once it's
> > clear who would be a good candidate for that.
> 
> I'm sorry, but I don't think that's a plausible interpreation of the
> record.  In none of your messages did you state or imply an intention to
> delegate anyone to any task.
> 
> Quoting your messages to debian-legal:
>   * Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> [2004-02-12 09:17]:
>   > Hands up anyone who wants to take on the job of official d-legal
>   > summariser.  I can think of a few people who *could* take the job,
>   > unfortunately, those qualified also tend to be those most qualified in
>   > other areas.
>   >
>   > I certainly *don't* think it should be a committee summary; we've
>   > already got one discussion group (d-legal), no need to add a second
>   > one.
> 
>   Oh, absolutely.  Also, I don't think we need one official summarizer.
>   Really, anyone can volunteer to summarize a particular discussion,
>   post a summary to -legal to get the "ok" and then send it on.  We
>   don't necessarily need one specific person to do that - what we need
>   are volunteers willing to do it.[8]
> 
>   * Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> [2004-02-12 00:01]:
>   > > Of course, perhaps the best thing for -legal to do is have people
>   > > self-nominate themselves to this position, and then have a small
>   > > vote.
>   >
>   > Hmm.. do we really need to have a single person charged with writing
>   > all of the summaries?
> 
>   No, I think we just need vounteers who step in in a particular discussion
>   and volunteer to summarize it.
> 
>   > If there are just 4-5 regulars who feel like me, the chances of someone
>   > volunteering for any given request would be much better than the
>   > chances of a Single Official Summarizer not being buried under
> 
>   Yes, which is also why I'm relucant to appoint one delegate for this
>   right now.  It would be good if a group of people would do it and after a
>   few months we see automatically who the people are who are doing it
>   regularly.[9]
> 
>   * Simon Law <sfllaw@debian.org> [2004-02-11 18:01]:
>   >       I'm willing to take on a position to summarize our discussions,
>   > and present them to upstream.  I think I can do this diplomatically,
>   > and I have some experience with this.  (I was responsible for ironing
>   > out
> 
>   Thanks.[10]
> 
> In summary, I did not offer you any encouragement to move slowly with
> delegations, and you didn't appear to need any.
> 
> It has now been "a few months" since your messages of February.  I think
> both Simon Law and Jeremy Hankins have acquitted themselves well as license
> summarizers.  If I were the DPL, I'd be asking them if they'd be interested
> in continuing their work as official delegates -- assuming that the
> practice of summarizing licenses has helped more than it has hurt, which
> may not be the case given the ferocity of recent flamage against everyone
> on the debian-legal list collectively[11].
> 
> [1] Message-ID: <E1AkTHa-0005wX-00@proton.pathname.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/01/msg00216.html
> [2] Message-ID: <20040211211406.GA2747@deprecation.cyrius.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00117.html
> [3] I can't think of a case since January where someone came along saying,
>     "Hi, I'm writing a new license, can you guys help me out with this?"
> [4] We have had cases where an upstream license innovation was corrected to
>     be unambiguously DFSG-free with our assistance.  A recent example (i.e,
>     this month) is Best Practical LLC's license on RequestTracker 3.
> [5] Message-id: <E1AkTHa-0005wX-00@proton.pathname.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/01/msg00216.html
>     Message-ID: <20040211211406.GA2747@deprecation.cyrius.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00117.html
> [6] Method: have a folder containing all messages sent to debian-legal to
>     date.  Use Mutt to search the folder with the following expressions:
>     "~f Branden ~b Michlmayr" and "~f Michlmayr ~b Branden".
> [7] http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/campaign/2001/platform.txt
> [8] Message-ID: <20040217153805.GA1541@deprecation.cyrius.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00164.html
> [9] Message-ID: <20040217154023.GC1541@deprecation.cyrius.com>
>     http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00165.html
> [10] Message-ID: <20040217153821.GB1541@deprecation.cyrius.com>
>      http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00163.html
> [11] http://blog.bofh.it/id_42
>      http://blog.bofh.it/id_40
>      http://blog.bofh.it/id_38
>      http://blog.bofh.it/id_37
> 
> [A] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00229.html
> [B] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00270.html
> [C] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00226.html
> [D] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00118.html
> [E] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00514.html
> 
> -- 
> G. Branden Robinson                |    It's extremely difficult to govern
> Debian GNU/Linux                   |    when you control all three branches
> branden@debian.org                 |    of government.
> http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    -- John Feehery



On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:55:02PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> [self-followup to add some information and make a correction]
> 
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:10:57PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > You did not use the words "delegate" or "official", nor anything synonymous
> > as far as I can tell, in your reply to Mr. Quinlan.
> 
> Sorry, I meant to rewrite this paragraph but forgot to.
> 
> You did use the word "delegate" elsewhere in the discussion, to communicate
> the fact that you didn't see an immediate need for one.
> 
> >   Yes, which is also why I'm relucant to appoint one delegate for this
> >   right now.  It would be good if a group of people would do it and after a
> >   few months we see automatically who the people are who are doing it
> >   regularly.[9]
> 
> ...for example.  More context is available in my previous message.
> 
> > Instead, at the end of the message, you emphasized that you would not be
> > taking immediate action:
> > 
> >   I'd like to hear what other people from -legal think.  I'm certainly
> >   not going to appoint anyone without the consent of -legal since this
> >   is just not the way it can work.  But perhaps we can find a solution
> >   together.
> 
> I continue to not be sure what the above means, exactly.  You're on the
> record as saying that you feel formal delegation "is against the way Debian
> works."[1]
> 
> The context of the discussion was formal delegation status, however, as the
> existing ad-hoc approach of debian-legal discussion had come under
> critique.  So I'm not sure if you were saying you'd "appoint" someone in an
> informal capacity, or make a departure from your "pragmatic approach" (as
> you put it) by naming an official delegate.
> 
> Could you clarify this for us?
> 
> > > you told me that this is not the task of -legal.
> > 
> > I did?  Where did I do that?  Not only did I not reply to your messages to
> > debian-legal in that thread[5], I didn't post to the thread at all.  (It
> > seemed to be doing just fine without me.)  In fact, as far as I can
> > determine, if you and I have communicated on this subject, we haven't done
> > it on the debian-legal mailing list[6].  Of the nine messages you've sent
> > me privately this year, none of have been on this subject.
> 
> (s/none of/none/)
> 
> I forgot to mention that I checked the archives of debian-project and
> debian-vote as well.  We've discussed delegation in general terms, but not
> this specific issue.  There was no DPL candidates' debate this year, so
> that's ruled out as well.
> 
> Maybe your regex skills are better than mine.
> 
> > So that you'll surmise less and understand more about what I think, here's
> > my opinion: debian-legal is a discussion list, and that's what it does
> > best.  It discusses.  I think that, as DPL, you'd be best advised to draw
> > any delegates on licensing issues from the pool of respected participants
> > on the debian-legal list; they are more likely to be informed, be
> > interested, and have the respect of their peers.
> 
> -- 
> G. Branden Robinson                |     Q: How does a Unix guru have sex?
> Debian GNU/Linux                   |     A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;
> branden@debian.org                 |        fsck;more;yes;fsck;fsck;fsck;
> http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |        umount;sleep

I did forget a citation in the above (my second reply).  Here it is:

[1] Message-id: <20031102142118.GA13708@deprecation.cyrius.com>
    http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/11/msg00041.html

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |      The noble soul has reverence for
Debian GNU/Linux                   |      itself.
branden@debian.org                 |      -- Friedrich Nietzsche
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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