Re: Using the Debian open use logo to distinguish DFSG-compatible licenses
Evan Prodromou <evan@debian.org>
> You're free to think what you like, but if you're going to make
> derogatory public remarks, intellectual integrity requires that you
> provide evidence for your opinions.
Well, that same integrity would require that you provide evidence
for your essay's claims, so you have no call upon it. Nevertheless:
The essay accuses readers of not looking at the evidence, but see
how little evidence *it* references. When evidence is mentioned,
it seems very questionable. For example, summarising free content as
'a few dozen software manuals and Gnome themes in 2001'
smells bad to me: there was enough free content around when I first
knew what I was looking for (=after my copyright warning) in '97-98
to produce half-decent magazines (and not about Gnome themes!).
It didn't seem that hard to find material, but the licences were
more fragmented and each needed reading. I feel the amount of
free content has increased only a little faster than general net
take-up, but I could be wrong, so I await evidence with interest.
'It's clear that by providing some "stepping stones" to Free
content, CC has made a comfortable path for creators to follow.'
Isn't a correlation with time or other factors far too obvious
to call your suggested causal link clear? How many CC-by licensors
previously used another CC licence? How many CC-nc licensors are
ex-CC-nd ones? If you have that evidence, why isn't it there?
'The technical issues with CC licences are being
addressed in the upcoming CC 3.0 licence suite'
should wait until everyone comments when CC 3.0 actually hits the
wire as a public draft. We hope they are, but what do we know?
(especially given the debian-cc is a man down since its start)
And so on. The essay often reminded me of the proofs listed in
http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html in some ways. Sorry.
> [...] The license that a work is available under is a large factor in
> whether or not a work can be included in Debian. Choosing the right
> license doesn't ensure that a work will be included, but choosing the
> wrong license ensures that it will not.
Almost every licence is different, even if only in small details.
Just as one can screw up a usually-OK licence with a dumb addition,
one can tidy up a usually-not-OK one with an extra permission.
I doubt that a "debian-friendly" labelling scheme for *licences*
will do anything besides make more confusion and divisions, but
good luck in trying.
[...]
> I hope that works out for you. Please let me know when you get that
> program off the ground, and I'll contact the developers of my favourite
> apps to encourage them to join in.
I guess you didn't want to answer the question of whether the same
labelling scheme could work for both. I feel it's a shame you
resorted to an unmarked edit to indicate that.
So be it,
--
MJR/slef
Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
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