Re: GR: Editorial amendments to the social contract
On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 04:31:49AM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 01:21:33AM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> >> Raul Miller wrote:
> >> > * There are people in Debian.
> >> Fine, there are a bunch of silly interpretations as well. The context
> >> indicates that "Debian" means "the Debian system" or "the Debian
> >> distribution". You could interpret it as meaning "the Debian Project",
> >> but that would be silly, because it would make the whole Social Contract
> >> make
> >> no sense whatsoever. (Are you software? Are you free software?)
> >
> > I think you are being too quick to dismiss Raul's comments. He has
> > pointed out in the past that "Debian" means a lot of different things;
> > it's a project, an OS, among others.
> >
> > So "Debian will remain 100% Free Software" is not entirely clear,
> > given that Debian is a bunch of people in certain contexts.
> > Why not spell out the context?
>
> Quite right and perfectly reasonable -- spelling out the context is a fine
> idea.
>
> But it's essentially a different topic from the message Raul was replying
> to, which was explaining that there are only two possible ways to
> interprent the "...will remain 100% Free Software" part of the sentence,
> and that his "and/or" interpretation simply wasn't one of them.
No, I still think you're missing the point. Once you admit that the
meaning of "Debian" varies with context, it follows that "Debian will
remain 100% Free Software" has more interpretations. Firstly, the two
that you posted, but then:
Debian (the project) will remain 100% free software - meaningless.
Debian (the people) will remain 100% free software - meaningless.
etc. Once you narrow in on "Debian the distribution" you might only have
two interpretations, but don't be so quick to assume that context.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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