Re: Anton's amendment

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:

>         I am sorry, it says allow modifications. Period. Not allow
>  modifications only in parts that some people consider important. Not
>  allow modifications, except in secondary sections. 

I agree with Manoj here (as anyone following the discussions should
know already), but I want to amplify what he says a bit.

The FSF insists that only modification of "functional" parts is
important, and this is a key in the disagreement.  We insist on the
modifiability of all parts, not only in the parts which someone says
are the important parts to be able to modify.

Some of the reasons for this are technical, because whether a section
is important to be able to modify depends a lot on what you are trying
to do, and the FSF seems shortsighted in imagining plausible things
one might try to do.  Some of them are administrative, because it
makes deciding what is suitable for incorporation into Debian much
simpler when all works are subject to the same standards, whether
"functional" or not.  Some of them are matters of principle (for some
of us), because we simply disagree about the FSF's limitation of
freedom's importance to only functional elements.

Regardless of the particular reasons--and even if there are not any
good reasons--it is the case that this is the DFSG as written, and so
I agree with Manoj that a 3:1 requirement is necessary for the
proposed amendment.

Thomas