Re: Questions to candidates
* David N. Welton <davidw@dedasys.com> [2004-03-02 22:51]:
> Another thing that would be useful to add to all questions of this
> type is something along the lines of "and as DPL, do you think you
> can do anything about it, or plan to?" to hear whether the
> candidates plan to do anything either personally or as DPL about any
> particular issue.
I absolutely think we can and should try to do something about this.
In fact, in the case of the GFDL, I had various discussions with
Bradley Kuhn (Vice-President of the FSF) and later helped creating a
committee which discusses these issues with the FSF. There were some
conference calls and one meeting IRL, and we are currently waiting for
the FSF to post an update - everything has unfortunately been delayed
because RMS broke his arm a while ago. However, Don Armstrong and
Mako Hill (who represent Debian in this matter) are in close with Eben
Moglen, the FSF lawyer.
In general, I think that Debian has the responsibility to approach
other people if their software or documentation license is non-free
and to explain why this is bad (Of course, it is their right to create
software or licenses which don't comply with out DFSG, but we should
at least point out why we think it is important for software to be
free according to the DFSG).
My approach with regards to the GFDL is outlined in detail in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2003/debian-project-200310/msg00117.html
and some thoughts about being more proactive with regards to non-free
license can be found in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00117.html
(plus follow-ups).
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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