Re: GR proposal - Restricted-media amendments to the DFSG
Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:
> On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 10:15:08PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
>> So a GR can state that pi=3,
>
> No.
>
> Language, and interpretation thereof, is not an exact science. Math is.
But the interpretation of licenses is something rather different from
either math or plain language. Certain institutions (mainly the courts)
have a privileged position when it comes to interpreting licenses, so
it's quite possible for Debian to be Just Plain Wrong(tm).
As I've said on debian-legal, I interpret the GR as claiming a
particular interpretation of the license, not a particular
interpretation of the DFSG. I acknowledge that the GR itself was
ambiguous on this point. I can conceive of no other reasonable way to
interpret it, though, as the vote was not set up to require a 3:1
majority.
(In my personal opinion, the result of the GR was rather foolish,
because it takes a risk that it could simply be false. If so, we've
potentially screwed over our users -- very much as if we didn't know the
value of pi and so legislated it to be 3.1. But it's a done deal at
this point; I'm not trying to rehash old ground, simply to make sure my
cards are on the table.)
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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