On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 04:42:45PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > No, the entire point was to make it clear that, as far as the Social > Contract is concerned, everything in Debian is software. (This is > my understanding, based both on the changes made by 2004-003 and the > discussions surrounding it.) Note that the "DFSG" was not renamed to > the "Debian Free Stuff Guidelines", and the word "software" is still > used four times in the SC (not including its use in the phrase "DFSG").
It's probably also worth pointing out that the word "software" is used more times within the DFSG itself. And, that in contexts where "software" is not explicitly mentioned that it's pretty clear that the focus is on the license for that software. It's probably also worth noting that we don't use a very restrictive definition of "software" -- "sequences of bits" would probably work in most contexts as our definition for "software". It's probably also worth noting that every time the social contract uses the word "free" that it is referring to the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" -- since those are our guidelines for what we mean by "free". Finally, it's probably worth noting that all "software" is used by shipping it to hardware, and having the hardware do something with it. The details, of course, depend on the hardware. [In other words: I agree.] -- Raul