On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 03:38:20PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > > > How do you compromise between A and B when the the distinguishing > > > feature is that A wants to have nothing to do with B? > > On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 12:10:30PM -0800, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: > > 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. > > How does that work? Seems to me that you can achieve A associates > with B, or A does not associate with B, but neither are compromise. You seem to be conflating "distributes" with "will remain" into a single concept: "associates." I'm not doing this. > The problem with the current subtitle is that it appears to extend > to packages which it shouldn't cover. > > But the current subtitle was not intended as a definition of Debian as > a whole, only the "Debian GNU/Linux Distribution". You can see this in > numerous places in the social contract. I think that this interpretation is better served by text similar to that which AJ suggested. > > 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. > > The problem with your "immediately clear" idea is that if it were possible > to be "immediately clear" on this topic we wouldn't have a need for the > social contract and dfsg. > > The whole point of writing the social contract, and the whole point of > writing the dfsg, is that these concepts aren't intuitively obvious but > need to be spelled out for people. In the next paragraph I said: "If we have the ability to make a firm and largely unambiguous statement and then elaborate and explain it in the body, we should." I think "immediately clear" is a goal; it may not be one we will achieve but it has to be one we push for. I'm just saying that I think since the subtitle will -- for better or for worse -- get more attention than the body text. We should be careful in drafting it so that it's can stand on its own as well as possible -- even if it's not perfect without the supporting body text. > > 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. > > Which begs the questions: how large does the unambiguousness need to > be, how much precision (verbosity) can we tolerate, and what flavors of > ambiguity can we live with? We'll have to settle for as good as we can do. My critique was that I thought the proposed text was not there yet. :) Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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