On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 10:46:32PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > I intend to. I'm sorry to offend you by asking people more familiar > > with the GNU Emacs Manual to assist. > > What bugs me is that you've now issued *TWO* proposals without > ascertaining their effect first. How many more times are you going to > make proposals before getting the facts down?? I hope "none", but I > fear otherwise.
Debian is a collective effort. It is unreasonable to expect a person to vet all 6000 packages in the Distribution before issuing a proposal. One of the strengths of having a large and vital Project is that this kind of work can be parallelized. I did in fact research the impact of my proposals on several GNU manuals -- I don't know of anything else in Debian yet licensed under the GNU FDL -- and discussed the impact in my proposals. Failing to achieve 100% certainty in a proposal's effects is not the same thing as not ascertaining the effect at all. > Does your proposal contradict DFSG 3 or not? That is not a determination that you or I am solely empowered to make. > If it doesn't conflict: then it either is purely clarificatory, or > else it suggests restrictions beyond those required by DFSG. And in practice Debian has applied several restrictions in the past not clearly found in the DFSG. A review of the debian-legal archives will turn up some, but there is no centralized clearinghouse for this sort of information; no effort to collect precedent into a single location. Anthony Towns encouraged doing so. That none yet exists is a poor reason to object to me starting one. > If you want it to be purely clarificatory, Not purely, no, and I was rock-solid clear about this in the proposal. > If it's a new restriction (and I am not intrinsically opposed to new > restrictions), then I ask that it not restrict in such a way as to > cause packages currently in main to get thrown out. Asked and answered. Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "So anything failing DFSG 3 that happens to be in main due to an oversight should be grandfather by my proposal? That's what "no problems" means, and would be grounds for rejecting my proposal outright as an attempt to repeal DFSG 3. No, the existence of packages with unmodifiable text already in main is something that should inform our process, but cannot be determinative because of the possibility that there is already something in main that should not be. My proposal is a guideline, not a suicide pact. I believe Debian should have a standard a priori the GNU Emacs Manual (for example), and not reason backwards on the assumption that everything that is in main must belong there. People find DFSG violations in main regularly. The intent of my proposal is not to grant categorical immunity to any class of these violations." > 1) Do you believe your proposal to contradict the DFSG? No. > 2) If the answer to question (1) is "no", then do you see your > proposal as merely clarifying practice, or do you see it as > imposing an additional restriction beyond those currently believed > to obtain? Fallacious: false alternative. The proposal clarifies current practice, which is to *RELAX* the restrictions imposed by DFSG 3 and 4. It furthermore attempts to provide rules-of-thumb to help prevent us from relaxing these guidelines too greatly. Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "> As I understand it, a package that makes it into [main] complies > to all points of the DFSG. However, your proposal will allow > packages that don't fully comply the DFSG to enter [main], if > the violation is not too grave. I consider this inconsistent. Well, depends on what you mean by "comply". Under what I understand to be your interpretation of "comply", everything licensed under the GPL or LGPL would have to be removed from main because the text of these licensed is copyrighted and licensed under terms that forbid modification. I agree that this violates an iron-fisted interpretation of DFSG 3. However, the DFSG and Social Contract were passed when many, many GPL'ed packages were already part of Debian, and as far as I know, few people have ever proposed that GPL'ed software be removed from Debian. This isn't to say that non-modifiable text isn't solely a problem of the FSF's -- the BSD licenses are also affected, and, in a sense, anything with a copyright notice is as well. Interpret DFSG 3 *THAT* strictly and there wouldn't be much left *in* Debian. Just public domain materials. We may as well just fold up shop and quit if that's the case." -- G. Branden Robinson | Human beings rarely imagine a god Debian GNU/Linux | that behaves any better than a [EMAIL PROTECTED] | spoiled child. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein
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