On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 09:18:41AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > > I view this as an important compromise the social contract struck > > between those folks who did not want to (or would not!) work on a > > project that was not an explicitly a Free Software project and those > > who did wanted to have the project distribute and support non-free > > software. > > How do you compromise between A and B when the the distinguishing > feature is that A wants to have nothing to do with B? The compromise is reached by drawing firm limits what around what Debian is (or what and how it will remain) while drawing different limits around what it can distribute. You're right in thinking that this is not the most elegant solution (to say the least) but it got people to work together. > > > 1. Debian Shall Continue Distributing Software That's 100% Free > > > > You're changing a sentence about what Debian is made of to one that's > > about what Debian distributes. IMHO, what Debian defines itself as is > > more important than what bits they move around. > > False. What Debian is made of is defined in the preamble: > > The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made > common cause to create a free operating system. > > I'm not changing this at all. The current subtitle reads to me as a definition of what Debian is and a commitment to how it will remains. Your proposal reads to me as a statement about how some of the software Debian distributes is licensed. If this isn't your intention, I apologize for implying that it was -- but your intentions are not being served by the current suggested text IMHO. Just because Debian developers have gotten together together to work on free software does mean their distribution is a totally Free Software. I think this fact needs to be immediately clear in the subtitle and I don't think it is in this suggested version. > > Moreover, the way you've worded this makes me think that as long as > > Debian has a single GPL'ed shell script in a sea of non-free software, > > we're doing our job. > > That is an ambiguous interpretation of the subtitle if you ignore the > rest of the social contract. The real mystery is why people want to get > all the meaning from the subtitles and ignore the rest of the contract. The subtitles should be an accurate reflection of rest of the document. The subtitles are the bits that get quoted all over the place -- like it or not. If we have the ability to make a firm and largely unambiguous statement and then elaborate and explain it in the body, we should. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
Attachment:
pgpfhN5Z6zkom.pgp
Description: PGP signature