On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 02:22:13 +0200 Thomas wrote: > > > I've been recently contacted by two people belonging to Creative > > Commons Italy staff, regarding your draft summary. > > Hi, I am one of those guys, thomas of curse
Hi Thomas! > > > We began a three-party discussion (in italian): I was hoping to talk > > about debian-legal's proposed license fixes, but, so far, our > > conversation has been drifting more and more towards life, universe > > and everything... > > that's the reason why I stop posting. Yeah, I suspected that... > > > > > First thing I did was proposing to them to involve debian-legal > > itself in the discussion, since the summary was born here, and thus > > any comment is best addressed here. Unfortunately, it seems that > > this proposal was not accepted, since we went on talking (in > > italian) without Cc:ing debian-legal... > > I'm following this thread -and some other- but is not so easy to > understand it completely - right now I am studying the desert island > test...;-) I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? [...] > I don't know if cc.org will be happy to change their licenses to make > them (or at least some) dfsg free. We hope so, even though, so far, not much encouraging feedback has reached us... [...] > The point -at least for me- is to figure out if others agree. > Some of the main opinion against this point are that dfsg are directed > to software and cc are not. So, if a software license must be free, a > multimedia (I use this term to understand us, it could be not the > correct one) license has to be open content. The main point you seem to miss is that DFSG are indeed directed to software, but with the term "software" in its widest meaning. In other words, if, by "software" you mean programs only, then, no, DFSG are not directed to "software" only, but to both programs *and* other (non-program) works. Otherwise, if by software, you mean (essentially) non-hardware, as many do here, then, yes, DFSG are directed to software. And so does Creative Commons! :) I hope to have clarified a little... [...] > I think that one of the most important aspects of > free/dfsg/opencontent/... is to create freedom. Freedom for authors > and for users. And a very important freedom is that they (both) can > decide which license to use. Well, as a matter of fact, authors always have absolute freedom to choose the license they like for their own works. Users, on the other hand, can never choose which license they receive a given work under... I think that the point is giving freedom to people that are *not* copyright holders for the work, since the copyright holder already has absolute power over his/her own work. And, in order to give freedom to the public, the license must be permissive enough: the DFSG are a set of criteria to be checked when you want to find out whether a work gives enough freedoms. Debian users count on having those freedoms on each package that the Debian project distributes in the "main" section of its archive (see http://www.debian.org/social_contract). > If they are not free in doing that, > because if they release their images with BY-SA, these images can't > stay in debian main distribution, than something is wrong. Well, let me try to clarify. Every author is permitted to choose the license as (s)he likes. Every user is permitted to choose the software as (s)he likes. Free software enthusiasts avoid non-free (that is, too restrictive) software. Debian has promised to not distribute non-free software in main. Many free software enthusiasts like Debian for precisely this reason (among other ones, of course): Debian helps them to avoid non-free software and to find useful free software. Keep in mind that, in these arguments, when I say "software" I'm not speaking of programs only: software is programs, documentation, images, sounds, animations, literature, ... > > This is the reason because I hope that this project will go further. > But, as I said, it's just my personal view. We hope to solve this issue, too. > > > Hope to be useful to the discussion I think you are. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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