On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 11:20:32AM +0200, Fabian Fagerholm wrote: > Anthony's proposal states or infers > * Debian says GFDL is non-DFSG-free > * GFDL material will not be included in main > * The problems with GFDL are "Invariant Sections", "Transparent > Copies" and "Digital Rights Management" > * Each problem alone is enough to make GFDL non-DFSG-free > * FSF could make a new version of the license DFSG-free but hasn't > done so despite four years of negotiation I believe I was fairly careful to only say that the invariant sections violated the DFSG; though each of those problems makes it an unsuitable license for main. I haven't seen an argument from the DFSG why the non-invariant problems make the GFDL non-free, but since they are guidelines, I don't think that's enough to say they're free either. "Unsuitable for main" doesn't have those problems. > Does Debian officially end DFSG negotiations with FSF as a result of > this GR proposal? If not, what role or purpose does this GR proposal > have in the context of continued negotiations? You'll need to ask the people talking to the FSF, or the DPL for that. > The GR proposal apparently results in useful GFDL-covered material to be > moved to the non-free section. In a previous GR, Debian has reaffirmed > support for non-free. Is it a conscious motive or an accidental > side-effect of this GR proposal to work towards supporting a Debian > system where users can decide for themselves what "level of freeness" > they wish to have, [...] Huh? They can already do that. There's been discussion about making non-free more fine-grained in various ways; but that's not particularly related to anything else, though. > It has been claimed that the amendment in fact says "the GFDL is > non-DFSG-free even when Invariant Sections are not used, but we will > include such material in main anyway", contradicting the Social Contract > (?1). Is this true? If not, why does the amendment require a 3:1 > majority to pass? If it weren't true, the amendment might imply that "the DFSG now allows GFDL without invariant sections even though it didn't in the past", which would also require a 3:1 supermajority. It's also possible it might override previous decisions by delegates such as the RM team, which would require a simple majority. I don't think the tech ctte's said anything that would require overriding, if it had, that'd be a 2:1 supermajority. > The amendment suggests that Debian encourage -- presumably through its > developers -- documentation authors to use another license than the GFDL > (or dual-license). At least one major free software project (KDE) has > stated that a license change is practically impossible. Does the > amendment have any other effect besides asking developers to ask > upstream authors to drop Invariant Sections to avoid their software > being moved to non-free? It'll hopefully result in maintainers not sitting on GFDL bugs any longer. In the event it doesn't, it'll probably result in -qa folks converting GFDL RC bugs into NMUs or removal requests. Up until now, TTBOMK, the only recommendation maintainers have had is suggestions by people along the lines of "don't do too much about this, pending negotiations with the FSF". Branden or Manoj can possibly give a more specific outline. > Is the document > http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html an official > position statement of the Debian project? If so, which GR(s) has (have) > established this? No it is not, that's why it's titled "__Draft__ Debian Position Statement about...", emphasis added. I'll be voting both options above FD, and I'd encourage others to do likewise. If you wnat further discussion -- let's get it out of the way now; if you want a different outcome to what's proposed so far, work out what it is and give us another amendment to vote on. I don't think the supermajority rquirement is likely to matter that much. Cheers, aj
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