Re: Proposal: The DFSG do not require source code for data, including firmware

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 09:24:16PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 12:32:46PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Well, the only one who could claim that his views have some representativity
> > of the project as a whole is you, everyone else is just expressing his own
> > opinion, be he a DD or a guy from NM or some random poster.
> 
> Anyone can claim their views are representative of the project, and
> everyone -- including myself -- would be wrong to do so. 

So, why do you denigrate Peter in such a way ? What you said could apply as
well to you, no ? 

> The project has procedures for establishing its views on subjects: be that
> by package maintainers having opinions about their packages, discussions
> on mailing lists, setting policies, decisions by delegates, the technical
> committee or the project secretary, or having a vote about it.
> 
> There are a few people who are authorised to speak on behalf of the
> project, including myself, Steve McIntyre as 2IC [0], and Joey Schulze as
> press officer. But none of those people get to cast their own views as
> the project's -- they simply have been entrusted by the project through
> the appropriate means to put the project's views into words.

Ok.

> But Peter wasn't claiming that his views were the project's by any means
> -- he simply stated them in a way that, in my opinion, is easily mistaken
> for a statement of a pre-existing consensus on behalf of the project. 

I guess he never said so, he just worded his argumentation in such a way, that
he thought his position was comon sense. Also, since in the previous cases i
was involved in the non-free firmware issue, many people chose to use the same
argument, both in the debian-legal threads and elsewhere.

> There is no such consensus, however -- if there were, there would have

<blink>

There is no such consensus that debian doesn't chip hardware ? I think we
don't need consensus, these are plain facts, and we even advertize them on our
web site, so i think there is some major misunderstanding about this going on.

> been no one to raise this GR in the first place -- and this process
> of discussion and voting is how the project forms its opinion on the
> subject, which may well end up being entirely different to Peter's
> opinion, or yours, or mine.

Indeed, so, why did you need to resort to such bass tactics as an ad-hominem
attack on Peter using his non-DD status ? 

> > Well. do we chip hardare, and as thus have the content of their ROMs covered
> > by the DFSG ? 
> 
> We choose to apply the DFSG both to the components that the Debian system
> requires, and to what we use to provide debian.org services. It can be
> reasonably argued that non-free firmware encoded in ROMs is involved in
> both cases.

<blink> 

huh ? 

That would be the first time i hear anyone say this with a straigth face or
really meaning it. If you would get look at the logs, i have used that same
argumentation in the debian-legal thread last year, but with a
proof-as-asburdum, or however it is called, way.

If we where really going to argue this, we could just as well stop shiping
debian, since there is no way to actually make use of any of the content we
ship without some piece of non-free firmware, the first of it being the
non-free bios you use on your system.

> I'm reluctant to argue for or against either of those, since I don't
> know what the project's view on these things is or will be, and I don't
> want anyone to be confused into thinking that my personal view on this
> is the project's.

Maybe, but then you don't make statements as you did, going away from arguing
about the non-free matter, and into polemics about if non-DDs are allowed to
post and comment, or if they should show due respect to the venerable DDs and
be silent, and not contradict one's better.

> I'm entirely comfortable in saying that it's an issue worth discussing
> though, because that's both my personal view and, in my opinion, the
> project's view.

So ? How does that excuse the comment you made. This is completely irrelevant
to the critic raised against your comment.

> > I am not aware of such a situation, and altough Peter may have
> > not said it in the best way, remember that for all those non-native english
> > speakers there is a language barrier there, [...]
> 
> TTBOMK, and according to whois, Peter is US based, and a native speaker...

So much for that then.

Friendly,

Sven Luther