Re: Question for candidate Towns [Was, Re: DPL election IRC Debate - Call for questions]

[Don Armstrong <don@debian.org>]

On Tue, 08 Mar 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> 3) Some would argue that this impose an additional fee or
> restriction (in the same way as a post-card licence) on our
> distribution as part of debian. (read the debian-legal posts for
> this past year or so, if you doubt).

Nothing in debian-legal has said anything like this at all.[1]

Compliance with the regulations of the country that a large portion of
the infrastructure is located within is nothing new, and has little or
nothing to do with the DFSG freeness of the software at hand.

[In fact, this is something that almost all mirror operators have to
deal with in almost every country, as many countries have stupid and
pointless laws dealing with works that are "weapons", "hurt children"
or "offend $DEITY|$INTEREST_GROUP".]


Don Armstrong

1: Feel free to list specific messages refuting this, but considering
that I've read almost all of the messages sent to -legal in the past
few years, I should have remembered. [If only because I would have had
to engage the flamethrowers at maximum and engage in deadly battle to
cleanse such arbitrary linkage of stupid governmental regulations to
things that matter, like software freedom.] I mean, my memory is bad,
but I haven't replaced my brain with a large container of carbonated
soda water, rumors to the contrary and my dietary intake of said
beverage notwithstanding.
-- 
"For those who understand, no explanation is necessary.
 For those who do not, none is possible."

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu