On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 03:09:55PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On top of that, we used to distribute shareware. We stopped -- that's
> not useless to our users, but indicates something about our existing
> practices.
Huh? We didn't make any particular decision to stop distributing shareware
afaik. sharefont was removed because it didn't have proper licenses, not
because it had shareware stuff in it. rar and unrar seem to be the only
really obvious shareware in unstable/non-free atm, afaics, but edict,
fractxtra, and gsfonts-other also might include some shareware-ish bits.
> This reminds me of a rotten apple argument -- apples with minor blemishes
> can be useful to make pie. But, just because you can make an apple pie
> with apples which have any sort of blemish doesn't mean that an apple
> which combines all those blemishes is worth anything.
The same argument applies to dropping non-free: just because some
blemishes are okay, like the BSD advertising clause perhaps, doesn't mean
we want to be using software that's full of worms, like restrictions on
commercial distributions. I don't think it makes much sense for Debian
to be drawing the line and forbidding anyone to cross it, when our users
are perfectly capable of making those decisions for themselves.
> > > You claimed that my proposal would have us stop distributing something
> > > we currently distribute. I asked you what.
> > Are you sure? I claimed "This tries to change our current practice in
> > some ways, such as claiming non-free meets some DFSG" in
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debian-vote-200401/msg01563.html
> > but in reply you claimed that there are no such packages at present.
> > Even if that is true, that isn't the same thing.
> As a result of existing practice, every non-free package meets some of
> our guidelines. How is that not the same thing?
If someone presents a package with a license that allows us to distribute it,
but doesn't meet any of the DFSG, currently, we'll accept it.
If the social contract is changed as you propose, we'll reject it.
That's a substantive policy change: it'll change what software can
actually sit on the ftp site.
And if you really think it's never going to happen anyway, there's no
point making that change to the social contract. There's no practical
point certainly, but there's no philosophical point either: if even
the worst non-free licenses we can imagine comply with some part of the
DFSG, then we're not taking any particularly worthy stand by increasing
our exclusivity.
> > > In fact, it's not like rolling a die at all. People act from
> > > motivations and goals, not from pure randomness.
> > It's not simple randomness, no, and I made no reference to that aspect
> > of dice-rolling. You simply cannot claim that a change which prevents
> > something possible under current practice is not a change of current
> > practice. That does not depend on "pure randomness".
> In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're
> different.
And the cow jumped over the moon. That was a complete non sequitur,
afaics. MJ Ray's example wasn't any more theoretical than someone asking
what Debian's take on any license that hasn't already made it into the
archive is.
> > There's some joke about going to Scotland for the first time and
> > seeing one black sheep from a train, then concluding that all sheep in
> > Scotland are black! All you can conclude for sure is that there is at
> > least one sheep in Scotland with the parts you saw being black. You
> > can make guesses based on the available evidence, but they can be
> > disproved by a counter-example. I am trying to construct a
> > counter-example, which you refuse to discuss properly.
> I don't consider theory to be practice.
> Sorry.
And that's just proving MJ Ray's point that you're refusing to discuss
this properly.
> And what is the positive reason for debian to want to distribute such
> a thing?
The same as for all non-free software we distribute: someone finds it
useful, and we're able to do so at little to no cost to ourselves.
> But that's not why we're distributing that software -- that's a blemish.
> We're distributing the software because it offers some other freedoms
> for at least some of our users.
I can't imagine why you think distributing the distributed-net client
enhances anyone's freedom in any way.
Heck, take that package: it can't be freely redistributed by anyone but
Debian (failing #1, #5, #6, #7, #8), it doesn't come with source code
(#2), you can't make derived works either legally or practically (#3),
leaving two guidelines met, #4 because it's irrelevant, and #9 unless
you take "in .. their official distribution" to be analogous to the
requirement of "all other programs .. must be free software".
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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