Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:11:47PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: I do stand behind my words; here are, chastizing the GFDL for not being free, standing on the verge of the rowing GNU documentation out of Debian, and yet, we blithely, though the instrumentation of an annual Debian Developer conference, accept any non-free license there is, as long as it makes our conference a success. I leave it to the readers to determine if this is, or is not, hypocrisy . Whether or not anyone in Debian is taking a hypocritical position on this issue[0], I think it would be very inappropriate to *chastize* anyone for the fact that the GFDL does not meet the DFSG. The FSF have indeed never claimed that the GFDL was a Free Software license, and they don't claim that the same freedoms that are required for programs are required for documentation, either -- a position that you may recall is shared by a significant number of developers within Debian. We may have decided that extending the same freedoms to documentation and data as to programs is important enough for us to take a stand on, but by no means does that justify haughtiness towards our fellows in the Free Software community. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ [0] Wwhen an open organization such as Debian has individual members who hold *different* positions, one usually describes that as schizophrenic, not hypocritical signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The same benefit that accrue from freedom of software still remain if that software bits represent a presentation; the software/presentation can be modified to suit a particular need, and redistributed, excepts can be used in other presentations, ica can be part of a larger educational effort. Like any other software, having the free software/presentation bits leads to collaboation, invention, and greater benefit to the community of users. It is a pity that a conference of debian developers, and others interested in developing debian, which is itself dedicated to being wholly free, and who has just rejected the GFDL as not being free enough to be a part of debian, is now saying that in order to be a part of Debian's conference, anything goes, and the sole rationale given is that non-free stuff, while restricting the usage rights of the community, is OK to ensure the success of the conference. Hold on - does this mean I will or won't be able to do apt-get install debconf6-doc ? cheers, Rich. -- rich walker | Shadow Robot Company | [EMAIL PROTECTED] technical director 251 Liverpool Road | need a Hand? London N1 1LX | +UK 20 7700 2487 www.shadow.org.uk/products/newhand.shtml -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
* Rich Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-14 18:46:50]: Hold on - does this mean I will or won't be able to do apt-get install debconf6-doc you will, and most likely it will be 100% complete. if someone packages it. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Rich Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-14 18:46:50]: Hold on - does this mean I will or won't be able to do apt-get install debconf6-doc you will, and most likely it will be 100% complete. if someone packages it. Uhhh, why would something like that be packaged? Just put it on http://www.debconf.org or something. Don't bloat the archive with more crap like this. -- Captain Logic is not steering this tugboat. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Rich Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-14 18:46:50]: Hold on - does this mean I will or won't be able to do apt-get install debconf6-doc you will, and most likely it will be 100% complete. if someone packages it. Uhhh, why would something like that be packaged? Just put it on http://www.debconf.org or something. Don't bloat the archive with more crap like this. -- Captain Logic is not steering this tugboat. And the rest of the documentation? What use is the Maintainers Guide to a user? Why would you need the Linux Gazette in the archives? I see games there too - purge them, quick! cheers, Rich. (Captain Logic is my co-pilot.) -- rich walker | Shadow Robot Company | [EMAIL PROTECTED] technical director 251 Liverpool Road | need a Hand? London N1 1LX | +UK 20 7700 2487 www.shadow.org.uk/products/newhand.shtml -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:17:06 +1000 Anthony Towns wrote: Well, it's not an inaccurate description (I think), but you would use such a definition only if you think that charity is a stupid thing to do... So, if I'm parsing you right, you're saying that a person (such as myself) would only describe free software as giving up rights (such as I did) only if that person (me) thought that free software was a stupid thing to do? If that's not what you're trying to say, would you kindly look back over your argument, and retract the error? I said resembles to, which is not is equal to. My example about charity intentionally amplified the situation to make it clearer (I was hoping...). If it confused things further, I apology. Investment with no return seems (at least to me, YMMV) a stronger phrase than giving up rights. As a consequence, I didn't mean to say that you think that free software is a stupid thing to do. Just that you (well, Henning, IIRC) seemed to want to discourage people to license in a DFSG-free manner by calling it in a way that makes it appear as something better avoiding. Again, I'm not an English native speaker. Apologies if sometimes I do not choose words well enough... -- :-( 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 pgpSRINepiOVt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Rich Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Rich Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-14 18:46:50]: Hold on - does this mean I will or won't be able to do apt-get install debconf6-doc you will, and most likely it will be 100% complete. if someone packages it. Uhhh, why would something like that be packaged? Just put it on http://www.debconf.org or something. Don't bloat the archive with more crap like this. And the rest of the documentation? What use is the Maintainers Guide to a user? It's relevant because it's about creating packages. A dump of all stuff from Debconf is not going to be as relevant or as generally useful. Anything from Debconf that could be useful should be merged into the Developer's Reference or something; not just dumped into a separate package. Why would you need the Linux Gazette in the archives? We don't! It's freaking useless. I see games there too - purge them, quick! WTF? -- Captain Logic is not steering this tugboat. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 05:38:10PM +, Colin Watson wrote: On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 11:17:06PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 04:56:37PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: It resembles describing charity as investment with no return. Perhaps; though there are differences. Charity does have returns: both emotionally/psychologically, and in helping people get up on their feet so they can trade with you / work for you / employ you in future. Charitable donations might have different tax considerations too. By contrast, BSD-like licenses do nothing but give up your rights. Copyleft licenses do something in between -- giving up your rights in the hope that others will give up there's in return. People get emotional/psychological benefits from giving away their free software work under BSD/copyleft licences too; Sure, but that doesn't stop it from being a give away of your rights. It only (potentially) stops it from being an investment with no return. I can't say that I understand your by contrast here. There are certainly differences, but, with the exception of tax considerations, most of the things you list don't really seem to be among them. I never claimed writing free software was an investment with no return. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 04:56:37PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:28:41 +1000 Anthony Towns wrote: On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 07:26:55PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: I disagree with your calling licensing in a DFSG-free manner as giving up rights: this seems to imply that releasing DFSG-free works is something wrong or inappropriate. Uh, licensing in a DFSG-free manner *is* giving up rights. Of course it is. Maybe I didn't explain myself clearly enough, my apologies. What I meant is that using that description is suitable if you want to depict licening in a DFSG-free manner as something wrong that people should *avoid*. If the description is accurate, it's suitable at any time. It resembles describing charity as investment with no return. Perhaps; though there are differences. Charity does have returns: both emotionally/psychologically, and in helping people get up on their feet so they can trade with you / work for you / employ you in future. Charitable donations might have different tax considerations too. By contrast, BSD-like licenses do nothing but give up your rights. Copyleft licenses do something in between -- giving up your rights in the hope that others will give up there's in return. Well, it's not an inaccurate description (I think), but you would use such a definition only if you think that charity is a stupid thing to do... So, if I'm parsing you right, you're saying that a person (such as myself) would only describe free software as giving up rights (such as I did) only if that person (me) thought that free software was a stupid thing to do? If that's not what you're trying to say, would you kindly look back over your argument, and retract the error? Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:59:41AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. I think this is an awful reason, considering that Debian already contains too many non-software packages. I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? In case you hadn't noticed, for the Debian project's purposes software is a synonym for computer programs; if it weren't the reversion of the social contract would have had no effect on the non-free documentation in main question. Indeed, the secretary refused to allow a GR proposal to revert that policy without limiting the social contract to talking about free software. HTH, HAND! Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] From reading the responses from Andreas, rather than people trying poorly to interpret him, it's pretty apparent that they'll be giving freely licensed talks a greater weight than non-free ones. They're also going to make it easy to choose a free license from their interface. Furthermore, it implies a very strong desire to have freely licensed materials All of that is nice and well, but it does not change the fact that a DSFG-free license is not *required*. Hopefully if you don't like the way they run the conference you'll get involved in the future and help to make it even better. I am perfectly happy with the way the conference is being run. I am opposing those people who want the organisers to change the way it is being run, such that DFSG-nonfree papers will be thrown out simply because of the licensing. -- Henning Makholm It was intended to compile from some approximation to the M-notation, but the M-notation was never fully defined, because representing LISP functions by LISP lists became the dominant programming language when the interpreter later became available. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au In case you hadn't noticed, for the Debian project's purposes software is a synonym for computer programs; if it weren't the reversion of the social contract would have had no effect on the non-free documentation in main question. I case you hadn't noticed, there was a major _difference_ in opionons about how software was to be interpreted. The editorial clarification in 2004-003 removed the confusion by avoiding the ambiguous word software, but that does in no way mean that the ambiguity does not exist. -- Henning Makholm This imposes the restriction on any procedure statement that the kind and type of each actual parameter be compatible with the kind and type of the corresponding formal parameter. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 03:04:51PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] From reading the responses from Andreas, rather than people trying poorly to interpret him, it's pretty apparent that they'll be giving freely licensed talks a greater weight than non-free ones. They're also going to make it easy to choose a free license from their interface. Furthermore, it implies a very strong desire to have freely licensed materials All of that is nice and well, but it does not change the fact that a DSFG-free license is not *required*. At the moment, this is correct. A discussion was had on the mailing list[0] and the irc channel[1] on a similar issue, whether we should allow non-free software for the presentation of slides. I updated the site to state: If using slides, please consider that your audience will consist of people who use free software, and your choice of application to prepare and display the slides should reflect this if at all possible. I think this strikes a good balance of: Use free software! Use free software! Use free software! Oh, ok, if you really can't, I suppose we'll let you get away with it. But you should really. Hopefully if you don't like the way they run the conference you'll get involved in the future and help to make it even better. I am perfectly happy with the way the conference is being run. I am opposing those people who want the organisers to change the way it is being run, such that DFSG-nonfree papers will be thrown out simply because of the licensing. Interestingly, no one has asked us to do so on the team list. Regards, Neil McGovern [0] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [1] #debconf-team @ Freenode -- __ .` `. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Application Manager : :' ! | Secure-Testing Team member '. `- gpg: B345BDD3| Webapps Team member `- Please don't cc, I'm subscribed to the list signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On 11/14/05, Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I case you hadn't noticed, there was a major _difference_ in opionons about how software was to be interpreted. The editorial clarification in 2004-003 removed the confusion by avoiding the ambiguous word software Unfortunately not. :-( The GR's author explained[1] that both the DFSG and the SC required clarifying, but that in the interests of simplicity the necessary changes would be dealt with in separate GRs. Thus, 2004-003 clarified only the SC. Until his follow-up GR amending the DFSG is proposed and passed, the ambiguity will remain. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/07/msg00435.html -- Andrew Saunders
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:21:38 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:59:41AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. I think this is an awful reason, considering that Debian already contains too many non-software packages. I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? In case you hadn't noticed, for the Debian project's purposes software is a synonym for computer programs; if it weren't the reversion of the social contract would have had no effect on the non-free documentation in main question. Indeed, the secretary refused to allow a GR proposal to revert that policy without limiting the social contract to talking about free software. The editorial change actually had no effect on the social contract, which is why it was called an editorial change. So, by definition, since there was no real change to social contract, everything that is encoded in debian using 1's and 0's is software, as opposed to hardware or wetware. Do not pretend that your particular interpretation is the universally accepted one; the fact that no one objected to the GR title means that people who were paying attention agreed with everything is software, and people not paying attention, well. At the very least, there are varying interpretations, and pretending there are not does not help your thesis any. manoj -- Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them. Joseph Addison Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:04:51 +0100, Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] From reading the responses from Andreas, rather than people trying poorly to interpret him, it's pretty apparent that they'll be giving freely licensed talks a greater weight than non-free ones. They're also going to make it easy to choose a free license from their interface. Furthermore, it implies a very strong desire to have freely licensed materials All of that is nice and well, but it does not change the fact that a DSFG-free license is not *required*. Which is a pity. The same benefit that accrue from freedom of software still remain if that software bits represent a presentation; the software/presentation can be modified to suit a particular need, and redistributed, excepts can be used in other presentations, ica can be part of a larger educational effort. Like any other software, having the free software/presentation bits leads to collaboation, invention, and greater benefit to the community of users. It is a pity that a conference of debian developers, and others interested in developing debian, which is itself dedicated to being wholly free, and who has just rejected the GFDL as not being free enough to be a part of debian, is now saying that in order to be a part of Debian's conference, anything goes, and the sole rationale given is that non-free stuff, while restricting the usage rights of the community, is OK to ensure the success of the conference. I se this as saying that freedom is OK until it comes to something real, like holding a conference, and then the whole community/rights/freedom thingy is unworkable and too restrictive for words. There has been no argument that the rights of software freedom would not apply to software that represents presentations, only that somehow freedom implies you do not get the best of what is out there. Yes, a pity. Hopefully if you don't like the way they run the conference you'll get involved in the future and help to make it even better. I am perfectly happy with the way the conference is being run. I am opposing those people who want the organisers to change the way it is being run, such that DFSG-nonfree papers will be thrown out simply because of the licensing. Yes, I understannd you are in opposition. What you have not explained is why, or why are the reasons that software that represents programs or software that represents documentation should be free do not also apply to software that represents presentation materials. Why is it that the end user who looks st the presentation support software should not also gain the benefit of any free software, to edit, modify, incorporate into larger works, and freely distribute the result to others in the community. manoj -- There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope. -- Oscar Wilde Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 11:17:06PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 04:56:37PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: It resembles describing charity as investment with no return. Perhaps; though there are differences. Charity does have returns: both emotionally/psychologically, and in helping people get up on their feet so they can trade with you / work for you / employ you in future. Charitable donations might have different tax considerations too. By contrast, BSD-like licenses do nothing but give up your rights. Copyleft licenses do something in between -- giving up your rights in the hope that others will give up there's in return. People get emotional/psychological benefits from giving away their free software work under BSD/copyleft licences too; people hope that they'll get contributions to their work from other people in return from making it freely available (even if they don't require contributions under even the limited set of circumstances in which copyleft licences require them); and people have certainly found employment as a result of people making use of things they've given away under free licences, although I don't think that's the primary motivator for most people much more than it is in the case of charity. I can't say that I understand your by contrast here. There are certainly differences, but, with the exception of tax considerations, most of the things you list don't really seem to be among them. Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
* Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-12 23:40:57]: On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:13:51 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 10:21:08PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: But instead, what I'm led to wonder is if this is really standing up for our beliefs and fighting the good fight, or actually just trying to avoid those issues. Because insisting non-free stuff not appear at debconf seems like trying to avoid acknowledging its existence in the same manner as sweeping stuff under the carpet, rather than having the non-free stuff appear and trying to convince possibly disagreeable folks that the DFSG's terms really are worth following no matter what your goals. This is a conference for Debian development. By definition, Debian is 100%free. Am I mistaken in assuming that people contributing to Debian are already familiar with the social contract, and have decided to conform to it? (If now, why try to help Debian, which, as a project, has ratified the SC, and thus the DFSG == free ideal). at the last debconf in Helsinki there were people from outside debian giving talks, too. Hopefully we will have input from outside even in the future. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do stand behind my words; here are, chastizing the GFDL for not being free, standing on the verge of the rowing GNU documentation out of Debian, and yet, we blithely, though the instrumentation of an annual Debian Developer conference, accept any non-free license there is, as long as it makes our conference a success. Yes, you have caught the point: *you* and a few others keep complaining about usage of the GFDL and CC licenses, we do not mind. (Actually I consider the non-NC and non-ND licenses DFSG-free, so I care even less about this thread.) -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: Implicit in both your responses is that neither of you have any actual reason to do so, other than ideology -- there's nothing you actually seem to be itching to do that warrants a different license to the one I used. I suppose that it's hard to find arguments against against a copyleft CC license when many people do not even believe that it's not free. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. I think this is an awful reason, considering that Debian already contains too many non-software packages. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: I'm not sure anyone thinks we couldn't /function/ without non-free, I used to think we could do well without it (or at least we could in a couple of years) because free software made non-free software unneeded, then I changed my opinion when source-less firmwares were expelled from main. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
* Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-12 20:42:39]: Well, a conference that is not affiliated with Debian, such a requirement is not tenable, that is true. But if such a conference uses the Debian trademark, we can indeed ask that our core values, as enshrined in our social contract, be respected. If there is ever a collection of papers that appear to be a product of the Debian project, or seem to be endorsed by it, I suspect we can ask for the spirit of the social contract be not blatantly violated. the goal of the debian conferences is not to produce a pile of papers or other materials. it's goal is to inspire the participants to work on debian even in the coming year, give them new ideas and renew their dedication and passion to the project. If talks and papers conflict with that goal we might have to skip them. They are not the main purpose of the conference, but are supposed to serve as a tool to that end. That said, we strive for free papers and talks and discourage non-free ones strongly. We, the organizers, would like to have the freedom to use common sense and judge together if a given speaker/topic/idea who's paper's license conflicts with our requirement still can give a talk, if we think that it is worth it. Of course we will try to work together with him to find a way to license his talk/paper in a way that would fit both his and our requirements. So far it is doubtfull that that is even necessary, as last years lack of freely licensensed papers was mainly due to speakers not picking a lisense instead of them picking a non-free one. We recognized that problem and will make it easier for them to pick a free lisense by letting them pick one from a list when submitting the paper via the website. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a conference for Debian development. By definition, Debian is 100%free. Am I mistaken in assuming that people contributing to Debian are already familiar with the social contract, and have decided to conform to it? You are mistaken in thinking that the social contract mandates anything about the freesom of things that we do not put into our operating system. Are you now advocating we throw open contribution to Debian to all kinds of licenses for software content, and not run away from the non-free software by refusing to do so? Why do you persist in refusing to to ignore people making a distinction between things we put into our operating system and things that we don't? Debian is not about freedom for all content. Debian is about an operating system that consists of free content. The project has no official opinion about contents that is not in our operating system. Hmm. Blogs and mail, where the content is percieved to be the opinion of the author, and notratified by the project, seems definitely different from invited talks and papers, I dont see a difference that is not overshadowed by orders of magnitude by the difference between things we put into our operating system and things that we don't put into our operating system. I see. The project using funds to defray expenses of people who attend the conference counts for nothing, eh? You see nothing wrong in the Debian project paying for a paper with a non-free content? Not as long as that paper is not put into our operating system. Actually, if it is considered a part of Debian by a significant number of observers, we are failing to clearly mark content as non-free, No we are not. You allege that those observers think that Debian means free, even if marked otherwise. That is simply not true. So, you are advocating shipping, say, EULA'd sotware in Debian, and letting the best software win, and the hell with the DFSG? Or, if not, why the difference in your stance? Why do you insist on ignoring the enormous difference between shipping something in our operating system and not shipping something in our operating system? -- Henning MakholmDe kan rejse hid og did i verden nok så flot Og er helt fortrolig med alverdens militær -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:32:50 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:24:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. Debian's one of them -- we just clearly separate out the non-free stuff from the free stuff. I am coming to the conclusion thst we do not clearly enough mark the distinction. *shrug* The only lack of clarity comes when people indulge in sweeping rhetoric claiming that everything Debian related is 100% free, which is not true now and never has been. Yep, it is awfully convenient when people disagreeing with us can be labelled as merely indulging in sweeping rhetoric. To the point tat hand: while we might not have ever met the goals outlined in the social contract, there was never any doubt that we were striving for it -- freedom, amd free licenses, were always something you could count on Debian to embrace, any deviations were errors and omissions to be corrected, and not precedents to point to and say we could relax the stance that non-free licesnses hindered the community that we were trying to foster and harmed users in the long run. Personally, the conclusion I'm coming to is that Debian's spent a little too much time trying to have it both ways on issues like this, rather than fighting for what we actually believe even when that doesn't fit into a simple slogan. What I actually believe in (I am sure you were not saying you know better than I what I believe in, with that royal we, do you) is that free information is worth striving for, no matter what form that information takes. Case in point: Thanks to Colin Walter's liberal licensing of his Debian packaging talk, I was able to give my local Linux users group an excellent introduction to Debian (with full attribution, of course); a non-free license would have been an obstacle. manoj -- How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? One, but you can never change it back again. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:59:08 +0100, Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: * Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-12 20:42:39]: Well, a conference that is not affiliated with Debian, such a requirement is not tenable, that is true. But if such a conference uses the Debian trademark, we can indeed ask that our core values, as enshrined in our social contract, be respected. If there is ever a collection of papers that appear to be a product of the Debian project, or seem to be endorsed by it, I suspect we can ask for the spirit of the social contract be not blatantly violated. the goal of the debian conferences is not to produce a pile of papers or other materials. it's goal is to inspire the participants to work on debian even in the coming year, give them new ideas and renew their dedication and passion to the project. By the same token, software is there to help users do their job, and part of being the best OS there is is to allow our users to be more productive, and best make use of the tool (that is, the OS) we present them. By that simple reasoniung, is it not better to give the users all the software we can, even if it means installing Debian requires signing EULA's? If talks and papers conflict with that goal we might have to skip them. They are not the main purpose of the conference, but are supposed to serve as a tool to that end. Our goal is to produce the best FREE operating system possible; and a secondary goal is to convince people that when information is free, all kinds of unintended collaboration occurs -- which may not even have been envisaged by the original authors. Freely licensed talks may allow people to use them in other conferences and meetings (my LUG would be ever grateful to Colin Walters for his liberal licensing since it gave us a much better insight into Debian packaging). When information is free, it can be used in ways that greatly multiply the utility to the community (look at the myriad uses of google maps that have sprung up when google opened up the API). So far it is doubtfull that that is even necessary, as last years lack of freely licensensed papers was mainly due to speakers not picking a lisense instead of them picking a non-free one. We recognized that problem and will make it easier for them to pick a free lisense by letting them pick one from a list when submitting the paper via the website. If it is not even necesary, then why are we not using this as an opportunity to spread the word that free licenses are indeed viable, and can work even for conferences? That they are not just hobbyist tools to be discarded at the first whiff of any thing real and practical, like running a conference? manoj -- Zero Defects, n.: The result of shutting down a production line. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:43:07 +0100, Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Scripsit Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a conference for Debian development. By definition, Debian is 100%free. Am I mistaken in assuming that people contributing to Debian are already familiar with the social contract, and have decided to conform to it? You are mistaken in thinking that the social contract mandates anything about the freesom of things that we do not put into our operating system. Mandates, no. But why do you think we even have a social contract? Why do we insist on having new members ratify it? There are not just silly rules and historical formalities; there is an underlying belief that says that when information is free, the resulting collaborations, synergy, and novel uses of bits and pieces in a new whole can make the new effort far more rewarding, and allow it to go further, than if the information or software was not free. All these applies to talks as well; talks can be reused, modified, have bits included in other talks, to make the new talk better, and to spread the ideas further, and create new ideas, far better than if the original had been under a stifling non0free license, Are you now advocating we throw open contribution to Debian to all kinds of licenses for software content, and not run away from the non-free software by refusing to do so? Why do you persist in refusing to to ignore people making a distinction between things we put into our operating system and things that we don't? Because I am looking deeper than just the surfaec; in a shallow look, I guess there is nothing in the words of the social contract that applies to what Debian does otherwise,. However, the principles of freedom of information still apply in both cases. I do think it is about time that we practiced the freedom of information being useful more than as just a mere slogan and have our conferences be a mirror of our distribution: useable bits of information and presentation that pepe can modify for their own use, combine in other presentations, and feed back additions and orrections, making our conference papers a living document, and a shared resource. manoj -- Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. Arthur R. Miller Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:17:38 +0100, Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: at the last debconf in Helsinki there were people from outside debian giving talks, too. Hopefully we will have input from outside even in the future. Last time I looked, even our OS is full of contributions from people outside Debian. Indeed, most of the software we distribute came from somewhere else, and under a free license so we, and our users, can modify for our own use, distribute it, use it in new and novel ways, and grab useful bits and pieces to make our own programs better. Every bit of that applies to talks as well (thanks Colin Walters), and I fail to see why this is also not something we should strive for. manoj -- You will lose an important tape file. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] Our goal is to produce the best FREE operating system possible; and a secondary goal is to convince people that when information is free, all kinds of unintended collaboration occurs -- which may not even have been envisaged by the original authors. I dispute that the thing you call a secondary goal is a goal of the Debian project at all. You are very welcome to have that as a personal goal, and to do whatever you can to convince people of the matter. But please do not try to force that goal upon the entire Debian project. We're here, as a project to produce the best free operating system possible. No more, no less. If it is not even necesary, then why are we not using this as an opportunity to spread the word that free licenses are indeed viable, and can work even for conferences? Because the project is not about advocating a free-anything philosophy. The project should be open to anybody who agrees that free SOFTWARE is a good thing. It would be wrong, wrong, wrong, to decide that people are second-class members of the project just beacuse they do not extend that opinion to things that are not part of the operating system. -- Henning Makholm We will discuss your youth another time. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. I think this is an awful reason, considering that Debian already contains too many non-software packages. I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Case in point: Thanks to Colin Walter's liberal licensing of his Debian packaging talk, I was able to give my local Linux users group an excellent introduction to Debian (with full attribution, of course); a non-free license would have been an obstacle. Can you explain exactly how a CC copyleft-like license would have been an obstacle? -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? No, I just do not believe that this specious distinction is useful. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? No, I just do not believe that this specious distinction is useful. And yet, here's a case where it would be useful! Are you saying that Debian has too much documentation? What is the non-computer-program which we have too much of? I would venture to say that *most* of the archive is non-programs: web pages, documentation, and all kind of other such stuff. Could you prepare a list of which man pages you think we should drop? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are you saying that Debian has too much documentation? What is the non-computer-program which we have too much of? No, I am saying that debian has too many stuff which is not programs nor their related documentation, like e-zines, books, etc. This is not a new topic, if it's not familiar to you I am sure that you will be able to find plenty of old threads about this in the debian-devel@ archives. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are you saying that Debian has too much documentation? What is the non-computer-program which we have too much of? No, I am saying that debian has too many stuff which is not programs nor their related documentation, like e-zines, books, etc. It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. I haven't been to a conference, so maybe they are actually about beer, religion, and porn. Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:21:46 +0100, Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Nov 13, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Case in point: Thanks to Colin Walter's liberal licensing of his Debian packaging talk, I was able to give my local Linux users group an excellent introduction to Debian (with full attribution, of course); a non-free license would have been an obstacle. Can you explain exactly how a CC copyleft-like license would have been an obstacle? Because it is being incorporated in a larger work: My presentation accompanies a HOWTO, and has various scripts and example code to elucidate the point. I have been able to incorporate parts Colin's presentation into mine, and accompany that with documentations, scripts, examples, and at some point the whole shal be packaged; by the seed of it was the presentation, and now something has grown up around it. manoj -- America: born free and taxed to death. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can you explain exactly how a CC copyleft-like license would have been an obstacle? Because it is being incorporated in a larger work: My So it looks like you have issues with all licenses not compatible with the one you choose, being them DFSG-free or not. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. This still does not generally make them documentation. Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. Debian does not want, it's quite a different issue. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
It seems to me that we have some responsibility for the licenses used on these presentations. It also seems to me that we should structure our approach to these licenses similarly to the way we approach other license issues. That is: we should encourage people to use a DFSG license, and we should label the presentations to let people know whether it's main/contrib or non-free. We don't have to exclude non-free presentations to encourage free software. However, unlike other conference holding bodies (such as the ACM), we aren't really in the business of collecting and selling copyrighted material. So rather than asking for a transfer of license to ourselves we should be asking for a DFSG copyright on the material. But SHOULD is not MUST any more than it is SHOULD NOT or MUST NOT. You build a community by encouraging participation, not by mandating it (nor by discouraging or forbidding it). This applies to our part in the free software community as much as it applies to anyone's part in any other community. -- Raul
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:52:05 +0100, Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Nov 13, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can you explain exactly how a CC copyleft-like license would have been an obstacle? Because it is being incorporated in a larger work: My So it looks like you have issues with all licenses not compatible with the one you choose, being them DFSG-free or not. Err, did you not read? I said the core of the effort was the presentation; and the license I used obviously had to be compatible. Proceeding to dot the i's and cross the t's, the project can grow, and be incorporated into Debian, no matter which DFSG free license Colin had selected; since my work was based on his, obviously my license had to be compatible. The point is this: had the original license not been free, none of the rest would have grown up to potentially be included in Debian -- and thus the fact that the original license was free was critical. manoj -- Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Fred Allen Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 12:28:07AM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:01:48 +0100 Andreas Schuldei wrote: Fine Print Publication Rights Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged for an event connected with Debian. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. Debian does not want, it's quite a different issue. Debian does not want what? To distribute them? Hogwash. I'd be happy to upload them. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:15:20 -0500, David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 12:28:07AM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:01:48 +0100 Andreas Schuldei wrote: Fine Print Publication Rights Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged for an event connected with Debian. In case this is not already clear, I too agree with the decision to allow the authors the choice of _any_ DFSG free license. manoj -- Death: to stop sinning suddenly. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. You expect no contributions about release procedures, bug report management, the NM process, dealing with disappearing maintainers, models for collaborations with upstream authors, port status and buildds, NMU policies and etiquette, etc? Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. If your entire contact with the outside world is through apt repositories, you ought to rethink your communication strategy. -- Henning Makholm The compile-time type checker for this language has proved to be a valuable filter which traps a significant proportion of programming errors. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. The point of the discussion is not whether authors should be *allowed* to licence their papers DFSG-freely. Everybody agrees that that is a good thing. The disagreement is about whether authots should be *forced* to licence their papers DFSG-freely, under threat of exclusion from the conference. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged They are *not* mandating a DFSG-free license. All they are mandating is that the conference gets non-exclusive publications rigthts. -- Henning Makholm `Update' isn't a bad word; in the right setting it is useful. In the wrong setting, though, it is destructive... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:13:31PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. The point of the discussion is not whether authors should be *allowed* to licence their papers DFSG-freely. Everybody agrees that that is a good thing. The disagreement is about whether authots should be *forced* to licence their papers DFSG-freely, under threat of exclusion from the conference. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged They are *not* mandating a DFSG-free license. All they are mandating is that the conference gets non-exclusive publications rigthts. From reading the responses from Andreas, rather than people trying poorly to interpret him, it's pretty apparent that they'll be giving freely licensed talks a greater weight than non-free ones. They're also going to make it easy to choose a free license from their interface. Furthermore, it implies a very strong desire to have freely licensed materials. I believe these desires are sincere and that they'll look to have a complete panel of high quality freely licensed papers for the conference. Ultimately though, it's a judgement call, and you simply have to trust the people doing the work. They have shown a desire to encourage free software, and have also shown the ability to put on a successful debconf. This is why I support their decision to run the conference as their experience dictates. Hopefully if you don't like the way they run the conference you'll get involved in the future and help to make it even better. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:28:41 +1000 Anthony Towns wrote: On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 07:26:55PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: [...] I disagree with your calling licensing in a DFSG-free manner as giving up rights: this seems to imply that releasing DFSG-free works is something wrong or inappropriate. Uh, licensing in a DFSG-free manner *is* giving up rights. Of course it is. Maybe I didn't explain myself clearly enough, my apologies. What I meant is that using that description is suitable if you want to depict licening in a DFSG-free manner as something wrong that people should *avoid*. It resembles describing charity as investment with no return. Well, it's not an inaccurate description (I think), but you would use such a definition only if you think that charity is a stupid thing to do... [...] We shouldn't forget what an enormous act of generosity that is. Indeed, it really is. And Debian would not exist without numerous acts of generosity by many many people around the planet. Thinking that should remind everyone that giving back to the community should be considered a good thing to do, everytime it is possible... [...] If a paper/presentation/handout is interesting enough (I hope every author thinks his/her is, otherwise he/she would not give a talk at DebConf!), someone could modify it (in order to update it, improve it, translate it into another spoken language, ...) and reuse it (to give a talk in another conference, or to build a useful HOWTO, or whatever...). This mechanism would enable further spreading of good documentation on the subjects we care of. Sure -- and all those things are possible with certain classes of non-DFSG-free licenses too. Possible? Yes, but with non-free constraints and conditions that make it less likely to happen. Personally I would not spend time to create a derivative of a GFDL'd or CC-by-nc-sa'd work. The conditions to be complied with are too demanding, IMO. You might as well have said If a paper is interesting enough, someone might want to include it in Debian -- in which case I'd have to demur; I don't think my debbugs paper should be included in Debian, because as interesting as it is, it's stuck in a particular time, that, four months after the fact, is already obsolete. As far as good documentation goes, updating the inline documentation in the code would be much more valuable. OTOH, if someone wants to do that, and has an actual use for content from my paper (which seems unlikely to me), I'd be happy to bless that work under the debbugs license. So why didn't you license it in a DFSG-free manner in the first place, if you are ready to relicense upon request? Time is precious, you know: many people could be interested to build upon your paper, but be `scared' away by the license and be too busy (or shy) to try to persuade you to relicense. Maybe there are people that did so: you will never know... One of the strengths of free software is allowing unexpected and surprising uses and modifications of one's work. Think for a second about Linux. Linus Torvalds started it as a little personal project (IIRC, he initially described it by saying that it would never going to be something serious...). In that context a non-commercial license (similar to the old Minix one) could make sense. Imagine how the history could be different from the one we know, if Linus had chosen such a restrictive license... Fortunately he chose the GPLv2. [...] As a counter example, debconf5 went pretty well without those permissions. Pretty well from many points of view, but not if you count the number of DFSG-free works that were produced for the conference... Very few people chose DFSG-free licenses. What activities would you want to undertake that have been specifically blocked by the dc5 paper licensing? I don't know. I haven't even had much time to _read_ the papers. But, as I explained above: expect the unexpected... [...] Many typos and mistakes may be fixed. Some parts may be improved. Some parts may be updated, as time goes on. What is born as a paper, can become (part of) a HOWTO or similar document. Certainly this will never happen, if no permission to modify is granted. That would be the case if relicensing were impossible, but, well, it is. So your ideal situation is: everyone choses non-free licenses and then is got in touch with, asked to relicense and, after a long discussion, re-releases the paper in a DFSG-free manner. Remember that each author would need a separate (possibly) long discussion. I still think it's much simpler to get DFSG-free papers in the first place... [...] Huh? Papers are generally written *before* the conference takes place, not *after* (or does DebConf work the other way around?). How can papers talk about what happened at the conference? In the same way that astronomers can tell you that an eclipse is going to happen on a certain day at a certain time? They're
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Scripsit Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. You expect no contributions about release procedures, bug report management, the NM process, dealing with disappearing maintainers, models for collaborations with upstream authors, port status and buildds, NMU policies and etiquette, etc? All of that seems to be related to programs in Debian. Who knows? I can see no good reason not to distribute it. We should be distributing the software which implements all these things anyway. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
sorry for replying to this only today. i had been busy preparing for a talk i was giving yesterday at a conf. * Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-10 01:08:49]: given your knowledge level of how debconf intents to handle things and the way you escalate this issue gives me the idea that you mainly want to raise a stink and create unrest. First of all, it is *not at all* my intention to raise stinks or create unrest. If I gave the impression of being rude, I apologize: I didn't want to. I am not an English native speaker, hence I may have chosen the wrong words or style when drafting my message; moreover I may have misunderstood something when reading the C4P (Call For Papers). no, you could have asked on the debconf6-team mailinglist, for example. trying to get the largest possible audience by sending this to d-d and d-l is both addressing the wrong audience and trying to raising a stink. I visited http://debconf.org/ and failed to find any other relevant information about paper licensing, apart from the C4P itself. If you can point me to some URL where I can get first-hand info about how DebConf organizers plan to handle this kind of things, I would appreciate it. you could have look at the archives of the debconf6-team mailinglist where in http://liw.iki.fi/lists/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg00169.html it says btw, the licence situation (of the talks and videos) will be taken care of in COMAS (our conference management system) directly, something like people who'll commit talks will have to choose a (proper) licence at commit time. the current plan is to have a drop down menu where people can choose the license they want, very much like when they chose a license for an alioth project. I think you are involved (!) and I did raise this issue with you privately (end of last August), yes, then you complained about the way the license and distribution of the talks had been handled, that they were not available from the debconf.org server any more (due to a breakin). That is how i perceived it, at least. you did not make any constructive suggestions at any point. (and how could you, only refering to debconf5?) I really appreciate your efforts to organize the best conference you can. I really *love* the idea of a conference entirely dedicated to Debian, to be held in a different place each time. That's why I consider this issue as an important one: every DebConf is an event through which we get public attention and can thus spread our philosophy. The message really works better if we act consistently with our philosophy, IMHO. do we limit personal freedom of speakers in favour of our own, when we prescribe a license? debconf is about exchange of ideas (among others). will we only permit ideas from people that already share out view of DFSG-free? You might also think about the organizers options when a speaker surprisingly NOT picks a DFSG free license, If the rules mandate a DFSG-free license (as I suggest), I think the only option for the organizers is to not include the paper/presentation/handout in the conference proceedings and to not distribute it through the conference website, until the licensing issue is solved. Just like a Debian package doesn't enter main, until it meets Policy requirements (DFSG-freeness being one of them). yes, and i guess it will have consequences when speakers choose a non-free lisenese for their talk. It will reduce their chances to get a slot. or declares before the audience that his talk must not be distributed. In that case the talk cannot be distributed through the conference website or in the proceedings. But this holds even if you do not mandate a DFSG-free license. Actually the C4P already requires some permissions from the authors: the point is that the authors can violate the (informal) agreement given on the website and in a last minute action deliver a talk with an other license then aggreed uppon. We (the lynch mob) could wrestle down the speaker, beat her up, smash her notebook and carry her outside for further treatment, i guess. or something similar. (c: (attention! joke!) | Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, | presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials | used in conjunction with the presentation. Hence, you already have to plan what to do, when an author does not fulfill the C4P requirements. Correct me, if I'm wrong. and so we do (c: they are not very specific, so far, though. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:30:52 -0600 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:46:24 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: [...] I don't believe I've seen anyone debate my use of the (aiui) non-DFSG-free CC ShareAlike/Attrib clause on my debbugs paper this year. I did it, last july on debian-legal[1]. I was willing to get in touch with you (=Anthony) and try to convince you to relicense the paper in a DFSG-free manner, but haven't yet found the time to do so... I was not aware that you were soliciting opinions. If you are, I find it deplorable. I saw no benefit in sharing my opinion after the fact, but am perfectly willing to do so if you think my rectitude was implicit approval. [...] and the advocacy and arguments about the DFSG are more likely to have a long term effect than the license on any paper presented at a conference. Any advocacy of the DFSG by an organization that happily accepts non-free licenses when it is convenient, smacks so much of hypocrisy to be unpersuasive. But that is just my opinion. It's my opinion, as well. That is exactly what I meant when I talked about acting consistently with our philosophy in my reply[2] to Andreas Schuldei (earlier in this thread). [1] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- :-( 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 pgpFjISHdE7aF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:36:39 +0100, Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: do we limit personal freedom of speakers in favour of our own, when we prescribe a license? debconf is about exchange of ideas (among others). will we only permit ideas from people that already share out view of DFSG-free? Err, Why not? Why are software bits that represent a talk at a conference treated any differently than software bits that represent documentation or software bits that represent executable software? This line of argument you are using reminds me of the faction of Alex Yukhimets. That was a vocal group of developers back in '96 and '97, and espoused the idea that in order to be the best OS ever, and to maximize our utility to the users, we should not just permit software from people that shared our views. Indeed, the argument goes, in order to maximize utility to end users (as opposed to middlemen repackaging our product), Debian should be stuffed as full of software as possible, even if installing a Debian OS was a slew of click through EULA's. As any one connect with Debian would know (unless they have been in a closet for the best part of the last decade), that we rejected the view that sheer utilitarianism and convenience and even participation from non-free software authors transcended our views and commitment to the freedom of information, and software. Would you care to expound why the same criteria that extends to software bits representing documentation, code, executable, etc, should not extend to the software bits representing conference papers? How is the community not harmed by having non-free papers but not harmed by having non-free code? non-free documentation? manoj -- You will win success in whatever calling you adopt. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:45:35 +0100 Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: [...] The conferences I usually publish at always demand an all-out copyright _transfer_. However, in practice they will usually accept a non-exclusive license to print and distribute unmodified copies. I think it would be sad if Debconf required more than that. Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. Debian requires more than that in order to let something enter main. Is this sad? Quite the opposite, IMHO. Debian distributes lots of things that aren't DFSG-free -- not only stuff in non-free, but also stuff on lists.debian.org (like this thread), stuff on bugs.debian.org, and stuff on planet.debian.org. Those examples are primarily a case of not being able to do better and still function; here I believe we can do better, and therefore should. I fully disagree, also with your implied assertion that wanting the author to give up more rights than necessary is better for the purpose of a conference. I disagree with your calling licensing in a DFSG-free manner as giving up rights: this seems to imply that releasing DFSG-free works is something wrong or inappropriate. I would like to see more authors licensing in a DFSG-free manner because I want more freedom for the end-users (conference attendees *and* the rest of the planet: remember that the papers will be published somewhere, otherwise there's no use in writing them, since the speakers are going to give a talk on their subject, not to publicly *read* their papers!). Papers are (most often) documentation: I think that, recently, we lack DFSG-free documentation more than DFSG-free programs. Hence I want to promote DFSG-free licensing for documentation (and other non-program works). Since the Debian project (luckily) rejects non-free works from its main archive, a DEBian CONFerence (isn't that the meaning of DebConf?) seems to be the ideal event where to promote DFSG-compliance... It was merely a statement that no one is forcing anyone to license their works in a particular manner, merely that the organizers (which to avoid confusion, doesn't include me) of the conference determine what the minimal set of permisions they need to do their jobs is. [Not that you should take your ball and go home.[1] ;-)] You and Fransesco appear to want the conference organizers to require _more_ permissions than what they have already decided are the minimal set of permissions they need to do their job. Yes, in order to give enough permissions to the end-users to call the papers DFSG-free. If a paper/presentation/handout is interesting enough (I hope every author thinks his/her is, otherwise he/she would not give a talk at DebConf!), someone could modify it (in order to update it, improve it, translate it into another spoken language, ...) and reuse it (to give a talk in another conference, or to build a useful HOWTO, or whatever...). This mechanism would enable further spreading of good documentation on the subjects we care of. Oh my goodness, I'm explaining code reuse and the strengths of free software on _two_ Debian mailing lists! :-| These considerations should be seen as well known and obvious here... How could we arrive to the point I have to explicitly state them? :-( And I cannot see any argument that a conference needs more permission than the right to distribute verbatim copies of the papers and presentations. I believe to have just presented one of the arguments. I assume that the right thing is having the works licensed under a DFSG free license; granted, we've disagreed on numerous occasions whether that truly is the right thing or not... How do you conclude that? The conference papers are not going to be part of an operating system that anybody depends on; As has already been replied: says who?. Some papers could become useful documentation packaged for Debian. Why not? nobody will have a need to go about changing them. Again: says who?. Many typos and mistakes may be fixed. Some parts may be improved. Some parts may be updated, as time goes on. What is born as a paper, can become (part of) a HOWTO or similar document. Certainly this will never happen, if no permission to modify is granted. This is a different situation from documentation of code that _is_ in the operating system. You seemingly fail to see that the two sets (conference papers and documentation in the OS) may overlap. And that a member of one set may be modified enough (if legal permission is granted) to become member of the other set. Documentation has to be kept up to date as the software it documents changes; What do you think DebConf papers will talk about? Cooking? Or rather Debian-related software? I would say more often the latter than the former... ;-) that is important to people and businesses who have let their
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:45:35 +0100 Henning Makholm wrote: The conferences I usually publish at always demand an all-out copyright _transfer_. However, in practice they will usually accept a non-exclusive license to print and distribute unmodified copies. I think it would be sad if Debconf required more than that. Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. As does Debian. We just label the non-free software such that users have an easy way to be sure that they are not using it. Debian requires more than that in order to let something enter main. Is this sad? No. I'm not saying at all that papers that are not DFSG-free should enter main. What gave you that idea? I disagree with your calling licensing in a DFSG-free manner as giving up rights: this seems to imply that releasing DFSG-free works is something wrong or inappropriate. I am unable to comprehend why you think there is such an implication. By licencing things in a DFSG-free manner one needs to give up the right to prevent others from distributing modified versions of the work. That is a legal fact, not a matter of opinion. How you can go from a statement of this legal fact to a value judgement (which the words wrong and inappropriate are) is beyond me. I would like to see more authors licensing in a DFSG-free manner because I want more freedom for the end-users It's your right to want that, and you are free to encourage authors to do so. But that is something different from saying that papers with a cogent technical contribution should be rejected from a conference simply because their licensing does not live up to your ideals. Papers are (most often) documentation: I think that, recently, we lack DFSG-free documentation more than DFSG-free programs. If there's a lack of documentation, by all means encourage people to write some free documentation. However, I do not think that is furthered in particular by rejecting papers at at conference. Oh my goodness, I'm explaining code reuse and the strengths of free software on _two_ Debian mailing lists! :-| We are talking about conference papers. Not code, not software, not documentation to be distributed in main. These considerations should be seen as well known and obvious here... They do not mean that we _require_ of anybody that they license their software under a DFSG-free license. Our position is that software in this world exists already and already has whatever license its author is willing to grant. If the license is DFSG-free it is great, and it can go into main. If it is not, it can (sometimes, guided by purely practical considerations) be distributed in non-free. How do you conclude that? The conference papers are not going to be part of an operating system that anybody depends on; As has already been replied: says who?. Says I. Making the proceedings into a package would be pure archive bloat. A website is much superior for that purpose. Some papers could become useful documentation packaged for Debian. In those cases we should consider their merits as documentation, _irrespective_ of whether they are also Debconf papers or not. A paper that is not DFSG-free cannot be used as documentation - this holds whether or not it is a Debconf paper, and it does not become DFSG-free simply by being rejected from Debconf. nobody will have a need to go about changing them. Again: says who?. Says the laws of physics. The conference proceedings is a record of what was presented at the conference at a definite moment in the past, and what happened at that moment is not going to change. What is born as a paper, can become (part of) a HOWTO or similar document. Certainly this will never happen, if no permission to modify is granted. And rejecting the paper from the conference is not going to change that. This is a different situation from documentation of code that _is_ in the operating system. You seemingly fail to see that the two sets (conference papers and documentation in the OS) may overlap. Of course they may *overlap*. That is fine. But the fact that a paper is not in the overlap is no reason to reject it. What do you think DebConf papers will talk about? Debian in general. That includes, but is certainly not limited to, individual pieces of software. Papers are generally written *before* the conference takes place, not *after* (or does DebConf work the other way around?). How can papers talk about what happened at the conference? Because the paper is what is presented at the conference. I don't see how _anyone_ are better served by having an empty slot in the conference instead of a paper, simply because the paper is not modifiable. If you see how users are better served by having a non-free package moved out of main and possibly not distributed at all by the Debian infrastructure (e.g.: Sun's Java), maybe you can catch the analogy... I cannot see
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:39:52 +0100, Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Scripsit Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:45:35 +0100 Henning Makholm wrote: The conferences I usually publish at always demand an all-out copyright _transfer_. However, in practice they will usually accept a non-exclusive license to print and distribute unmodified copies. I think it would be sad if Debconf required more than that. Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. As does Debian. We just label the non-free software such that users have an easy way to be sure that they are not using it. Hmm. Not as part of Debian. Not on a CD. Indeed, nothing officially part of Debian can even depend on such non-free materiel. I think if the non-free GR were to be re-raised, I for one have changed my mid and would want Debian to not host the non-free packages; since I see I was wrong about things being clear about what is or is not part of the Debian OS. I would like to see more authors licensing in a DFSG-free manner because I want more freedom for the end-users It's your right to want that, and you are free to encourage authors to do so. But that is something different from saying that papers with a cogent technical contribution should be rejected from a conference simply because their licensing does not live up to your ideals. Well, a conference that is not affiliated with Debian, such a requirement is not tenable, that is true. But if such a conference uses the Debian trademark, we can indeed ask that our core values, as enshrined in our social contract, be respected. If there is ever a collection of papers that appear to be a product of the Debian project, or seem to be endorsed by it, I suspect we can ask for the spirit of the social contract be not blatantly violated. If we are talking about organizations unconnected to Debian, or ones not using our Mark, than we have no leg to stand on. In that case, this thread is off topic here. If there's a lack of documentation, by all means encourage people to write some free documentation. However, I do not think that is furthered in particular by rejecting papers at at conference. Oh my goodness, I'm explaining code reuse and the strengths of free software on _two_ Debian mailing lists! :-| We are talking about conference papers. Not code, not software, not documentation to be distributed in main. Why should software bits that represent papers be treated any differently from software bits that represent documentation or software bits that represent code? I have failed to find a rationale for such a distinction. They do not mean that we _require_ of anybody that they license their software under a DFSG-free license. Our position is that software in this world exists already and already has whatever license its author is willing to grant. If the license is DFSG-free it is great, and it can go into main. If it is not, it can (sometimes, guided by purely practical considerations) be distributed in non-free. Wong. We say that such code may go into Debian if and only if the license is DFSG free. manoj -- Fat Liberation: because a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 10:21:08PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Because sometimes one feels the need to fight for what is right? Even if people feel far more comfortable with just sweeping stuff under the carpet, and not brought out in the open? You know, I was going to say something like fighting, fighting, fighting; why isn't coding good enough, but to be honest, I don't really believe that anyway, or I wouldn't be subscribed to this list. But instead, what I'm led to wonder is if this is really standing up for our beliefs and fighting the good fight, or actually just trying to avoid those issues. Because insisting non-free stuff not appear at debconf seems like trying to avoid acknowledging its existence in the same manner as sweeping stuff under the carpet, rather than having the non-free stuff appear and trying to convince possibly disagreeable folks that the DFSG's terms really are worth following no matter what your goals. The world at large has lots of non-free licenses for content -- if we wanted to run away from that fact and avoid it, wouldn't we create a little enclave of our own with guards at the gate telling everyone who doesn't meet our standards to go back home, in the same way debconf is? (Hrm, I'm actually not sure why I chose the CC license now; I thought I remembered the dc5 CFP said papers had to be GPLed or CCed, and that tweaking all the mindless DFSG bigots by licensing my paper in a way that's adequately free, yet not DFSG-free would be fun. But the dc5 CC stuff was actually just for the recordings, afaics, so maybe that wasn't it, or maybe I was just confused. Oh well) My blog's licensed under the CC No-derivs/non-commerical license for much the same reasons as most of RMS's writings aren't DFSG-free; but that's fine -- I'm not trying to get them to become the basis of a developer community or similar, and that's why I'm not bothered by not having comments on my blog, either. And, thankfully, they do not come with the imprimatur of the Debian project, as Debconf seems to. My blog's aggregated on planet.debian.org; these lists posts (that aren't explicitly licensed at all, let alone DFSG-freely) are archived on lists.debian.org, and bug related conversations (which likewise are generally only implicitly licensed) are archived on bugs.debian.org. Of these, debconf probably is the one that makes least use of the imprimatur of the Debian project, being hosted at debconf.org. If Debian lends it names to a compilation of papers distributed by it, such as it may be construed as the compilation product of the Debian project, or in any way part of Debian, we are constrained to have that compilation be free. In the same way that non-free, which is distributed by DEbian, can be construed as the product of the Debian project or in any way part of Debian, then we're constrained to have non-free be free? That's a deeply erroneous argument, both at a factual level, and as advocacy. It's far more effective to advocate for something by demonstrating you're not prejudiced against the alternatives, and simply in favour of the best thing winning, and that you, personally, think the best thing is free software. You not only get your point across, but you also get to establish that you're not in denial about the strengths of your opposition and that your judgement and arguments can be listened to without having to filter out too much self-serving bias. If, of course, Debconf is a independent entity, not related to Debian, then I have no opinion, [...] Which strikes me as odd; personally, I think everyone should be doing DFSG-free software and free content, whether they're related to Debian or not. So I wonder if that attitude isn't part of giving up on the fight. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 07:26:55PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: The conferences I usually publish at always demand an all-out copyright _transfer_. However, in practice they will usually accept a non-exclusive license to print and distribute unmodified copies. I think it would be sad if Debconf required more than that. Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. Debian's one of them -- we just clearly separate out the non-free stuff from the free stuff. And heck, you could pretty easily come up with a definition of free that's either more strict than Debian (excluding the advertising clause or dropping the changes as patches dispensation, eg), or more liberal (that would include the Affero license or the GFDL, perhaps). Neither of those would be inherently unjustifiable, they'd just be different tradeoffs to what Debian's made. But calling them non-free in some absolute sense just isn't terribly meaningful. Debian distributes lots of things that aren't DFSG-free -- not only stuff in non-free, but also stuff on lists.debian.org (like this thread), stuff on bugs.debian.org, and stuff on planet.debian.org. Those examples are primarily a case of not being able to do better and still function; here I believe we can do better, and therefore should. I'm not sure anyone thinks we couldn't /function/ without non-free, but a majority of us decided it would be /better/ to keep it. I fully disagree, also with your implied assertion that wanting the author to give up more rights than necessary is better for the purpose of a conference. I disagree with your calling licensing in a DFSG-free manner as giving up rights: this seems to imply that releasing DFSG-free works is something wrong or inappropriate. Uh, licensing in a DFSG-free manner *is* giving up rights. You might as well disagree with entropy or conservation of energy. It's giving up the exclusive rights to control distribution of the work you created -- in the case of the BSD license, asking nothing but acknowledgement in return, in the case of copyleft licenses, asking only that others who contribute to the work do the same. We shouldn't forget what an enormous act of generosity that is. I would like to see more authors licensing in a DFSG-free manner because Even if for no other reason, promoting generosity is a wonderful thing. On the other hand, requiring it isn't -- that becomes an act of selfishness on our own behalf. Papers are (most often) documentation: No, they're not. Papers are radically different to documentation -- when you write a manpage you don't have to worry about standing up in front of a hundred people as well. I think that, recently, we lack DFSG-free documentation more than DFSG-free programs. That's not solved by bundling a paper in with the program; most particularly because papers are /hard/ to write, and that makes them hard to update, which in turn makes them obsolescent. Papers are to help people understand the talk; sometimes they might do more than that and perhaps even warrant inclusion in the distro, other times that goal alone is hard enough. Hence I want to promote DFSG-free licensing for documentation (and other non-program works). Promoting that's great; promoting it by telling other people to do it for you and not brooking objections is less so. Since the Debian project (luckily) rejects non-free works from its main archive, a DEBian CONFerence (isn't that the meaning of DebConf?) seems to be the ideal event where to promote DFSG-compliance... If demanding DFSG-free licenses for papers were a good thing, doing it at debconf would be an ideal place. I don't think the latter's been established; and given the organisers don't even fully understand what good licenses are for recordings of the conference, claiming we already have all the answers on what makes good licenses for conferences seems unjustifiable. If a paper/presentation/handout is interesting enough (I hope every author thinks his/her is, otherwise he/she would not give a talk at DebConf!), someone could modify it (in order to update it, improve it, translate it into another spoken language, ...) and reuse it (to give a talk in another conference, or to build a useful HOWTO, or whatever...). This mechanism would enable further spreading of good documentation on the subjects we care of. Sure -- and all those things are possible with certain classes of non-DFSG-free licenses too. You might as well have said If a paper is interesting enough, someone might want to include it in Debian -- in which case I'd have to demur; I don't think my debbugs paper should be included in Debian, because as interesting as it is, it's stuck in a particular time, that, four months after the fact, is already obsolete. As far as good documentation goes, updating the inline documentation in the code
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 05:28:04PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:30:52 -0600 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:46:24 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: I don't believe I've seen anyone debate my use of the (aiui) non-DFSG-free CC ShareAlike/Attrib clause on my debbugs paper this year. I was not aware that you were soliciting opinions. If you are, I find it deplorable. I saw no benefit in sharing my opinion after the fact, but am perfectly willing to do so if you think my rectitude was implicit approval. I did it, last july on debian-legal[1]. I was willing to get in touch with you (=Anthony) and try to convince you to relicense the paper in a DFSG-free manner, but haven't yet found the time to do so... Implicit in both your responses is that neither of you have any actual reason to do so, other than ideology -- there's nothing you actually seem to be itching to do that warrants a different license to the one I used. Any advocacy of the DFSG by an organization that happily accepts non-free licenses when it is convenient, smacks so much of hypocrisy to be unpersuasive. But that is just my opinion. It's my opinion, as well. And I guess it's not surprising that that means the resultant persuasion has to be little more than insults. That is exactly what I meant when I talked about acting consistently with our philosophy in my reply[2] to Andreas Schuldei (earlier in this thread). Personally, my philosophy is that as many people as possible should be encouraged to contribute to software, and free licensing (and thus the DFSG) is an important factor in that. Another important factor is treating contributors with courtesy and respect -- which at least means not calling them hypocrites, and at best means trusting them to make their own decisions on licensing. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:36:36 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 05:28:04PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:30:52 -0600 Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:46:24 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: I don't believe I've seen anyone debate my use of the (aiui) non-DFSG-free CC ShareAlike/Attrib clause on my debbugs paper this year. I was not aware that you were soliciting opinions. If you are, I find it deplorable. I saw no benefit in sharing my opinion after the fact, but am perfectly willing to do so if you think my rectitude was implicit approval. I did it, last july on debian-legal[1]. I was willing to get in touch with you (=Anthony) and try to convince you to relicense the paper in a DFSG-free manner, but haven't yet found the time to do so... Implicit in both your responses is that neither of you have any actual reason to do so, other than ideology -- there's nothing you actually seem to be itching to do that warrants a different license to the one I used. Err, selecting free software has mostly also been a matter of belief that freedom of information and software is a worthwhile goal, and that the synergy and explosion of stabding on shoulders of giants phenomena is worthwhile, and the returns of such a increase in cooperation are real -- and to be striven for. I personally have only exploited but a fraction of the free software that is out there, but still believe that I, and others benerift, even if I personally have not been an instrument in all such cases. I am sorry to see you dismiss this as mere ideology; and I am sorry that your imagination has not seen what I see. Any advocacy of the DFSG by an organization that happily accepts non-free licenses when it is convenient, smacks so much of hypocrisy to be unpersuasive. But that is just my opinion. It's my opinion, as well. And I guess it's not surprising that that means the resultant persuasion has to be little more than insults. Pot. Kettle. insults. ideology. I do stand behind my words; here are, chastizing the GFDL for not being free, standing on the verge of the rowing GNU documentation out of Debian, and yet, we blithely, though the instrumentation of an annual Debian Developer conference, accept any non-free license there is, as long as it makes our conference a success. I leave it to the readers to determine if this is, or is not, hypocrisy . manoj -- My BIOLOGICAL ALARM CLOCK just went off ... It has noiseless DOZE FUNCTION and full kitchen!! Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:28:41 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 07:26:55PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: The conferences I usually publish at always demand an all-out copyright _transfer_. However, in practice they will usually accept a non-exclusive license to print and distribute unmodified copies. I think it would be sad if Debconf required more than that. Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. Debian's one of them -- we just clearly separate out the non-free stuff from the free stuff. I am coming to the conclusion thst we do not clearly enough mark the distinction. I am changing my mind about the non-free GR -- this time, I would vote differently; since even you seem to imply that Debian includes non-free software, or close enough as to make no difference. If the perception is indeed that Debian distributes non-free software (and the distinction that this is not part of Debian really is silly), then I do think we need to move the non-free archive off Debian.org machines. If distributring non-free software is not only deemed acceptable, but doing so by debian seen as routine, then we are losing the vision of the SC (in my opinion). Either we change the social contract, or it is time to clearly mark non-free software as such by moving it off our machines. I'm not sure anyone thinks we couldn't /function/ without non-free, but a majority of us decided it would be /better/ to keep it. I was one of that majority. I have changed my mind. I think it is far easier now than it was a few years ago to host any non-free packages anyone is interested in. Hell, I'll even volunteer to help run such a machine if it means that the non-free software moves off debian.org machines. I am also now convinced I was mistaken in assuming that we label non-free software clearly. So, I, for one, am reexamining my previous support for keeping non-free on Debian machines. Perhaps it is coming to the time where the question should again be open for discussion. manoj -- Where the system is concerned, you're not allowed to ask Why?. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:13:51 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 10:21:08PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: But instead, what I'm led to wonder is if this is really standing up for our beliefs and fighting the good fight, or actually just trying to avoid those issues. Because insisting non-free stuff not appear at debconf seems like trying to avoid acknowledging its existence in the same manner as sweeping stuff under the carpet, rather than having the non-free stuff appear and trying to convince possibly disagreeable folks that the DFSG's terms really are worth following no matter what your goals. This is a conference for Debian development. By definition, Debian is 100%free. Am I mistaken in assuming that people contributing to Debian are already familiar with the social contract, and have decided to conform to it? (If now, why try to help Debian, which, as a project, has ratified the SC, and thus the DFSG == free ideal). Is there a need for us to invite software bits that are not free? Would we not be better off espousing the cause of freedom of software, even though doing so means I can't include all kinds of nifty stuff like cedega to run Quicken in Etch, or non-free papers in a conference of Debian developers? The world at large has lots of non-free licenses for content -- if we wanted to run away from that fact and avoid it, wouldn't we create a little enclave of our own with guards at the gate telling everyone who doesn't meet our standards to go back home, in the same way debconf is? Are you now advocating we throw open contribution to Debian to all kinds of licenses for software content, and not run away from the non-free software by refusing to do so? (Hrm, I'm actually not sure why I chose the CC license now; I thought I remembered the dc5 CFP said papers had to be GPLed or CCed, and that tweaking all the mindless DFSG bigots by licensing my paper in a way that's adequately free, yet not DFSG-free would be fun. But the dc5 CC stuff was actually just for the recordings, afaics, so maybe that wasn't it, or maybe I was just confused. Oh well) Hmm. While making tweaking other peoples nose as a criteria selecting a license for content I have created seems bizarre and juvenile to me, but you are not me, and it is your prerogative. My blog's aggregated on planet.debian.org; these lists posts (that aren't explicitly licensed at all, let alone DFSG-freely) are archived on lists.debian.org, and bug related conversations (which likewise are generally only implicitly licensed) are archived on bugs.debian.org. Hmm. Blogs and mail, where the content is percieved to be the opinion of the author, and notratified by the project, seems definitely different from invited talks and papers, with the invitation coming from Debian developers, for a conference related to Debian development, and where the Debian project defrays the cost of the presenters -- a hole new ball game, no? Of these, debconf probably is the one that makes least use of the imprimatur of the Debian project, being hosted at debconf.org. I see. The project using funds to defray expenses of people who attend the conference counts for nothing, eh? You see nothing wrong in the Debian project paying for a paper with a non-free content? So we would be paying for non-free software (which represents a presentation)? Somehow, I kinda find that ... unusual, to say the least. In the same way that non-free, which is distributed by DEbian, can I am glad you brought that up. I think the world has changed since we last looked at that issue, and perhjaps 2006 is a good year to re-examine that via a fresh GR? be construed as the product of the Debian project or in any way part of Debian, then we're constrained to have non-free be free? Actually, if it is considered a part of Debian by a significant number of observers, we are failing to clearly mark content as non-free, and should take steps so as to not dilute our message of the importance of freedom of software. That's a deeply erroneous argument, both at a factual level, and as advocacy. I beg to differ. It's far more effective to advocate for something by demonstrating you're not prejudiced against the alternatives, and simply in favour of the best thing winning, and that you, personally, think the best thing is free software. You not only get your point across, but you also get to establish that you're not in denial about the strengths of your opposition and that your judgement and arguments can be listened to without having to filter out too much self-serving bias. So, you are advocating shipping, say, EULA'd sotware in Debian, and letting the best software win, and the hell with the DFSG? Or, if not, why the difference in your stance? If, of course, Debconf is a independent entity, not
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:24:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's distributable. Debian's one of them -- we just clearly separate out the non-free stuff from the free stuff. I am coming to the conclusion thst we do not clearly enough mark the distinction. *shrug* The only lack of clarity comes when people indulge in sweeping rhetoric claiming that everything Debian related is 100% free, which is not true now and never has been. I am changing my mind about the non-free GR -- this time, I would vote differently; since even you seem to imply that Debian includes non-free software, or close enough as to make no difference. No, I specifically cited the difference from some other distributions -- that we separate it out quite clearly. Personally, the conclusion I'm coming to is that Debian's spent a little too much time trying to have it both ways on issues like this, rather than fighting for what we actually believe even when that doesn't fit into a simple slogan. I am also now convinced I was mistaken in assuming that we label non-free software clearly. So, I, for one, am reexamining my previous support for keeping non-free on Debian machines. Perhaps it is coming to the time where the question should again be open for discussion. Maybe we should just have it on a set date annually, no matter who won last time. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
It's not all that unusual for conferences to require that the material submitted for the conference be licensed in a specific manner; if you plan on presenting, some DFSG free license of the material you present should be expected so portions of the work can be utilized in main or otherwise distributed by Debian if desired. [If this poses a problem,[1] you always have the option of not presenting, or presenting your work in an informal session.] On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: Of course, DFSG-free isn't all the dc6 organisers are insisting on, but the right to MIT/X11 recordings of presentations too -- not even giving presenters the option to copyleft the recording of their presentation for some reason. This is primarily pragmatic, since there's no clear consensus on what the prefered form for modification for a video is, or even what it means to copyleft a video. [If you have a clear idea of what it means, you could communicate it to the organizers...] Don Armstrong 1: I'd be rather surprised if it did; but then again, I've been suprised before. -- Any excuse will serve a tyrant. -- Aesop http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:26:58PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? Even within Debian, it's become clear to me that, if we want DFSG-free things, it has to be mandatory and enforced, since there are people in Debian who care about the create a good operating system part, but less about the create a free operating system detail[1]. My point was that this isn't a big fight: these are papers, typically written by one person, who is probably in all cases immediately, easily contactable; not software with dozens of copyright holders, or written by companies feeling their commercial interests threatened. Compared to the battles underlying a lot of attempts to get free licenses, this is easy. I don't mean that it's obviously correct in the sense that people will do it anyway or agree without a debate. Both the documentation should be free threads and the firmware threads, among others, have shown me that no matter how obvious it may seem to me that something should be free, people will disagree. :) BTW, a question: if you say you must make your stuff DFSG-free, aren't you inspiring debate from people who don't want to, or who aren't comfortable with that, on why the DFSG isn't appropriate? If you made it optional or encouraged instead of compulsory, wouldn't that encourage debate on why the DFSG is good in the specific instances where people choose not to use free licenses? Wouldn't that be better? All it's doing is shifting who has to start the debate: in the optional case, the people who think all of the papers should be free will debate the cases that weren't; and in the compulsory case, the people who think papers shouldn't have to be free will debate theirs. Both of these are after the fact. What should happen is what is happening: debate the issue in advance, and make a decision based on that. [1] To be clear, I'm not thinking of anyone in this conversation. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:26:58 +1000 Anthony Towns wrote: On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 07:49:36PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: FYI, a possible response might be: we care about freeness, but we pick our battle, and our battle is Debian main. I care about starving children, but I don't donate the majority of every check to feed them: there are lots of good causes, and the fact that everybody has to pick and choose their causes doesn't mean people don't care enough. (That said, I don't agree with that response: it should be no big deal for people to freely license their papers, so they can be packaged later in Debian. This isn't a big, difficult fight.) Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? I wish it were obvious to everyone, but apparently it's not. Otherwise there would not be so much non-free documentation around and we would not have to deal with its (wrong) presence in Debian main... Try to think what it would mean to Debian, if your above-quoted don't fight philosophy were applied to the Debian distribution. There would be no separate sections of the archive (main, contrib, and non-free would be all merged in one melting pot of works): there are already many GNU/Linux distros that do so... Fortunately Debian is different. -- :-( 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 pgp8gxPUNgnZ7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 12:49:21AM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: It's not all that unusual for conferences to require that the material submitted for the conference be licensed in a specific manner; OTOH, conferences usually ask for the minimal permission they actually need to do their job. if you plan on presenting, some DFSG free license of the material you present should be expected so portions of the work can be utilized in main or otherwise distributed by Debian if desired. Debian distributes lots of things that aren't DFSG-free -- not only stuff in non-free, but also stuff on lists.debian.org (like this thread), stuff on bugs.debian.org, and stuff on planet.debian.org. [If this poses a problem,[1] you always have the option of not presenting, or presenting your work in an informal session.] *sigh* Does this really have to devolve to if you don't like it, go away already? How about showing your potential speakers enough courtesy to at least consider their concerns, and enough respect to believe that they're scrupulous enough that they'll do the right thing even without being forced? Or, for that matter, having the flexibility to accept that sometimes the right thing changes depending on the situation? On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: Of course, DFSG-free isn't all the dc6 organisers are insisting on, but the right to MIT/X11 recordings of presentations too -- not even giving presenters the option to copyleft the recording of their presentation for some reason. This is primarily pragmatic, since there's no clear consensus on what the prefered form for modification for a video is, or even what it means to copyleft a video. Huh? Copyleft == you can't restrict other people from redistributing and making further modifications. As an example: someone downloads the debconf presentations, culls various tidbits from them and puts them together in a dos and don'ts of technical presentations, then sells the new video for $5 a pop online, and refuses to allow people who purchase it to modify or redistribute it. Example copyleft licenses for videos include the CC ShareAlike licenses, the GFDL, the OPL, and the GPL. TTBOMK, of those, only the GPL talks about preferred form for modification. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 08:00:55AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:26:58PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? Even within Debian, it's become clear to me that, if we want DFSG-free things, it has to be mandatory and enforced, Of course, within Debian DFSG-freeness isn't mandatory or enforced: you can upload to non-free instead of main just by tweaking your control file. And that lack of compulsion, coupled with a fairly strong endorsement of DFSG-free content has resulted in DFSG-free software making up 98% of unstable. My point was that this isn't a big fight: these are papers, typically written by one person, who is probably in all cases immediately, easily contactable; not software with dozens of copyright holders, or written by companies feeling their commercial interests threatened. Compared to the battles underlying a lot of attempts to get free licenses, this is easy. The hard part isn't finding the people, it's convincing them that a DFSG-free license is best. That's why pine and qmail remain in non-free even though we know exactly who their authors are. Or, for that matter, most of RMS's writings are still licensed in a non-DFSG-free manner. BTW, a question: if you say you must make your stuff DFSG-free, aren't you inspiring debate from people who don't want to, or who aren't comfortable with that, on why the DFSG isn't appropriate? If you made it optional or encouraged instead of compulsory, wouldn't that encourage debate on why the DFSG is good in the specific instances where people choose not to use free licenses? Wouldn't that be better? All it's doing is shifting who has to start the debate: No, it's not. In this case, I'd much rather be in a position where I can argue for making things DFSG-free when I can see enough specifics to think of good reasons why that woul dbe okay, and remain silent in the cases where I don't think that's a win. I don't think remaining silent when people are being pressured to do things that don't seem right is a good option though, so instead I find myself arguing against the DFSG. in the optional case, the people who think all of the papers should be free will debate the cases that weren't; I don't believe I've seen anyone debate my use of the (aiui) non-DFSG-free CC ShareAlike/Attrib clause on my debbugs paper this year. There's no actual requirement for debate there either, the people who want to license their paper in non-DFSG-free way can happily leave the last word to the DFSG advocates because they don't have to debate to get their way; and the advocacy and arguments about the DFSG are more likely to have a long term effect than the license on any paper presented at a conference. and in the compulsory case, the people who think papers shouldn't have to be free will debate theirs. Which, to my mind, means it's a real, substantive win to not give people any reason to make this argument. At the very least, I'm getting really tired of having to have my desire for tolerance of other people's choices and individual freedoms trump my desire to argue for the DFSG freedoms everywhere. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 12:49:21AM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: It's not all that unusual for conferences to require that the material submitted for the conference be licensed in a specific manner; OTOH, conferences usually ask for the minimal permission they actually need to do their job. Often; but they're not mutually exclusive. [At least in the academic world, it's not all that unusual for publishers to require a non-exclusive, unlimited copyright license to the work; I think a requirement that material be DFSG free is substantially more reasonable than that, and better aligned with the goals of debconf.] if you plan on presenting, some DFSG free license of the material you present should be expected so portions of the work can be utilized in main or otherwise distributed by Debian if desired. Debian distributes lots of things that aren't DFSG-free -- not only stuff in non-free, but also stuff on lists.debian.org (like this thread), stuff on bugs.debian.org, and stuff on planet.debian.org. Those examples are primarily a case of not being able to do better and still function; here I believe we can do better, and therefore should. [If this poses a problem,[1] you always have the option of not presenting, or presenting your work in an informal session.] Does this really have to devolve to if you don't like it, go away already? It was merely a statement that no one is forcing anyone to license their works in a particular manner, merely that the organizers (which to avoid confusion, doesn't include me) of the conference determine what the minimal set of permisions they need to do their jobs is. [Not that you should take your ball and go home.[1] ;-)] How about showing your potential speakers enough courtesy to at least consider their concerns, I assume that's what is being done here... correct me if I'm wrong. and enough respect to believe that they're scrupulous enough that they'll do the right thing even without being forced? I assume that the right thing is having the works licensed under a DFSG free license; granted, we've disagreed on numerous occasions whether that truly is the right thing or not... Huh? Copyleft == you can't restrict other people from redistributing and making further modifications. I tend lump both legal and technical means of restriction together, so I automatically assume that copyleft implies the distribution of the prefered form for modification; in any case, dealing with the licenses below will make the distribution of the DVDs containing the talks a bit more difficult... as the people actually making the recording and digitizing it are doing the majority of the work for it, presumably they are in the best position to determine the licences for the recording. Don Armstrong 1: At least, not until I kick it over the fence for you. ;-) -- Clint why the hell does kernel-source-2.6.3 depend on xfree86-common? infinity It... Doesn't? Clint good point http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 10:46:24AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Of course, within Debian DFSG-freeness isn't mandatory or enforced: you can upload to non-free instead of main just by tweaking your control file. The response is predictable, but here it is anyway: non-free isn't within Debian; Debian mandates DFSG-freeness. The practical impact of that is lessened due to the ease at which people can add non-free to their sources; but if it's not fundamentally true, then SC#1 needs serious reinforcement. The hard part isn't finding the people, it's convincing them that a DFSG-free license is best. That's why pine and qmail remain in non-free even though we know exactly who their authors are. Or, for that matter, most of RMS's writings are still licensed in a non-DFSG-free manner. UW, DJB and RMS may be fairly extreme examples of people who are difficult to convince. :) No, it's not. In this case, I'd much rather be in a position where I can argue for making things DFSG-free when I can see enough specifics to think of good reasons why that woul dbe okay, and remain silent in the cases where I don't think that's a win. It's usually so easy to find reasons why DFSG-freeness is a good thing, I tend to assume they exist by default. So, I see it the other way around: things should be DFSG-free unless I can see enough specifics to think of good reasons why they shouldn't be. I don't think remaining silent when people are being pressured to do things that don't seem right is a good option though, so instead I find myself arguing against the DFSG. I don't understand how licensing papers DFSG-freely way doesn't seem right. Incidentally, I care less about papers than many other things, so I'm not going to spend much effort to try to convince people to DFSG-free them; however, I'm a bit interested to understand the rationale behind not wanting to, from people who are beyond I don't want people putting words in my mouth responses. (But I understand not wanting to spend time arguing *against* DFSG-freeness.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:26:52 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 12:49:21AM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: [If this poses a problem,[1] you always have the option of not presenting, or presenting your work in an informal session.] *sigh* Does this really have to devolve to if you don't like it, go away already? How about showing your potential speakers enough courtesy to at least consider their concerns, and enough respect to believe that they're scrupulous enough that they'll do the right thing even without being forced? Or, for that matter, having the flexibility to accept that sometimes the right thing changes depending on the situation? Err, if this compilation is a project Debian product, or is associated with us, then it seems like we are doing to presentation software bits what we ask of producers of other kinds of software bits: If you want it to be part of debian, you must ship all them software bits under a license we deem free. Why are presentation 0's and 1-s any different from executable 0's and 1's, or documentation 0's and 1's ? Again, if debconf is not related to debian, than none of this applies, and in that case, can we take this off a mailing list for Debian development? manoj -- We're living in a golden age. All you need is gold. D.W. Robertson. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:26:58 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 07:49:36PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: FYI, a possible response might be: we care about freeness, but we pick our battle, and our battle is Debian main. I care about starving children, but I don't donate the majority of every check to feed them: there are lots of good causes, and the fact that everybody has to pick and choose their causes doesn't mean people don't care enough. (That said, I don't agree with that response: it should be no big deal for people to freely license their papers, so they can be packaged later in Debian. This isn't a big, difficult fight.) Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? Because sometimes one feels the need to fight for what is right? Even if people feel far more comfortable with just sweeping stuff under the carpet, and not brought out in the open? While I am undecided how much I am willing to fight for DFSG freeness, and not sending people the message that Debian only fights for DFSG freeness when it is other peoepls free documentation, and blithely accepts whatever goes when it comes to their own convenience, I must voice my objection to this line of argument (why make waves? the misguided folks will come to see the crrect argument and do the right thing after all [Hello, Kansas Board of Education]). My blog's licensed under the CC No-derivs/non-commerical license for much the same reasons as most of RMS's writings aren't DFSG-free; but that's fine -- I'm not trying to get them to become the basis of a developer community or similar, and that's why I'm not bothered by not having comments on my blog, either. And, thankfully, they do not come with the imprimatur of the Debian project, as Debconf seems to. I'd prefer something like this: During and after the conference various materials will be made available to attendees and the general public; submission of a paper thus indicates permission to: * distribute verbatim copies and translations of the paper, slides and other materials provided by the presenter * distribute audio and video recordings of the presentation Presenters are encouraged to provide a specific license (preferably DFSG-free) under which the materials and presentation can be redistributed. If Debian lends it names to a compilation of papers distributed by it, such as it may be construed as the compilation product of the Debian project, or in any way part of Debian, we are constrained to have that compilation be free. If, of course, Debconf is a independent entity, not related to Debian, then I have no opinion, apart from isn't this off-topic here on this mailing list? manoj -- The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides. Andre Malraux Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:46:24 +1000, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au said: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 08:00:55AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:26:58PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? Even within Debian, it's become clear to me that, if we want DFSG-free things, it has to be mandatory and enforced, Of course, within Debian DFSG-freeness isn't mandatory or enforced: you can upload to non-free instead of main just by tweaking your control file. I am sure you are aware that is not part of Debian. Perhaps it was wring not to throw non-free archives off Debian machines, if such confusion is rampant. And that lack of compulsion, coupled with a fairly strong endorsement of DFSG-free content has resulted in DFSG-free software making up 98% of unstable. And 100% of Debian. I don't believe I've seen anyone debate my use of the (aiui) non-DFSG-free CC ShareAlike/Attrib clause on my debbugs paper this year. I was not aware that you were soliciting opinions. If you are, I find it deplorable. I saw no benefit in sharing my opinion after the fact, but am perfectly willing to do so if you think my rectitude was implicit approval. There's no actual requirement for debate there either, the people who want to license their paper in non-DFSG-free way can happily leave the last word to the DFSG advocates because they don't have to debate to get their way; Only if they want their papers in a collection which is actually part of Debian, they do too. and the advocacy and arguments about the DFSG are more likely to have a long term effect than the license on any paper presented at a conference. Any advocacy of the DFSG by an organization that happily accepts non-free licenses when it is convenient, smacks so much of hypocrisy to be unpersuasive. But that is just my opinion. manoj -- You have the power to influence all with whom you come in contact. Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:02:22 +0100 Henning Makholm wrote: [I tried to crosspost this between -legal and -devel, but apparently it never arrived on -legal. Resending...] Thanks. Scripsit Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] Don't you agree that seeing non-free or even undistributable (no license means All Rights Reserved, with current laws!) papers at a DebConf is really a shame? I don't. Remember that non-free != evil, and that some of the arguments why free software is a good thing do not apply to expositions of scholary work or other conference contributions. IMHO, papers to be presented at a conference are documents (often pieces of documentation) that can (technically) be read, studied, adapted, copied, redistributed and improved by other people. In a manner much similar to computer programs. I think that /legally/ allowing the above operations is a good thing for both programs and papers (and many other works of authorship). Are we restarting the documentation is (not) software discussion? Again? I hope we are not... ;-) People who think that intellectual property is in and of itself an evil concept are free to license their contributions liberally. I don't think that (all) free software developers see intellectual property in and of itself as an evil concept. However, I would rather avoid the term intellectual property... But on the other hand, people who like free software for pragmatic reasons related to its being, well, software should not be forced to give away more rights than practically necessary for making the conference work. Most of those pragmatic reasons apply to conference papers too, IMHO. Anyway, nobody is forced to give a talk at DebConf6, hence nobody would be forced to publish a DebConf paper in a DFSG-free manner (even if my suggestion were accepted). I mean: some constraints *need* to be put for a DebConf anyway. For instance non-exclusive publication rights are already required. Moreover the topic of the paper cannot be arbitrarily chosen: would you accept a paper about the proprietary Microsoft tools used to deploy a Microsoft network? or about medieval history? What I suggest is just adding another (good, IMHO) constraint. For example, it is common not to want to allow derived works for conference papers. It is also common to require high fees for attending international congresses and conferences. DebConf is not doing this, though (fortunately: a big thanks to all the sponsors!). It is also common not to want to allow derived works for computer programs (see e.g. Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Apple, Oracle, ...). Debian developers do not contribute to Debian this way, though. That does not conflict with the SC, because the papers are not going to be part of our operating system. I'm perfectly aware that we are not talking about SC violations. But complying with the SC is not the *only* good thing that DDs can do... :-) Moreover, I don't see a good reason to consider packaging DebConf papers for inclusion in Debian as an absurd idea. It could be done and could be useful. After all, we currently have several Linux Gazette issues in (sarge's) main: they have licensing problems, but if they hadn't any, I would have nothing against their presence in main. -- :-( 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 pgpQygxemupEi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:25:11 +0100 Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] That's why I consider this issue as an important one: every DebConf is an event through which we get public attention and can thus spread our philosophy. The message really works better if we act consistently with our philosophy, IMHO. We do not have a philosophy that says that everything ought to be DFSG-free. Do you think that a DebConf with more non-free papers and less DFSG-free ones would be a better conference? We have a philosophy that says that we only distribute things in main if they are DFSG-free. That is a different thing. I know, but why do we accept things in main only if they are DFSG-free? For a dogmatic adherence to rules written by others? Or rather for reasons that we consider as good ones and that lead to the rules detailed in the SC? I think the same reasons lead to think that papers should be accepted at a DebConf only if they are DFSG-free. Just like a Debian package doesn't enter main, until it meets Policy requirements (DFSG-freeness being one of them). DebConf papers will not be distributed in main. They are not, currently. That's why I said like and haven't filed any serious bug against the non-existent debconf-papers package... However, for the future, who knows? Someone could ITP some papers, maybe. At that point only the DFSG-free ones will be able to go in main. It will be better, if there are more of them. Actually the C4P already requires some permissions from the authors: | Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, | presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual | materials used in conjunction with the presentation. And this requirement would be a no-op under your theory that a DFSG-free license for the papers is required. Therefore I conclude that your theory is wrong. Which theory? Mine is a suggestion, not a theory. If it's accepted, the C4P will obviously be modified and will drop the non-exclusive publication rights requirement (as it is actually implied by the DFSG-compliance requirement that I'm suggesting). What I suggest is simply adding one further condition. For the record, I oppose this suggestion. I cannot fully understand why, but I take note of it. Are you concerned that less papers would be submitted to DebConf6 with such a rule? In case you are: why aren't you similarly concerned that less packages will be distributed in main, if we care too much about Freeness issues? -- :-( 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 pgpFpEKqbvRNG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
(FWIW, this is probably more of a d-project thing; d-legal is more about figuring out whether licenses are free and safe.) On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 12:24:58AM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: DebConf papers will not be distributed in main. Why not (and says who)? If they're worth anything at all, they sure seem like a decent thing to want to package--much more so than a lot of what seems to be packaged these days. I cannot fully understand why, but I take note of it. Are you concerned that less papers would be submitted to DebConf6 with such a rule? In case you are: why aren't you similarly concerned that less packages will be distributed in main, if we care too much about Freeness issues? His argument appears to be we don't *have* to do this, therefore we shouldn't, which isn't much of an argument. (FWIW, I don't have a strong opinion either way; I just happen to find Henning's arguments--at least, those you've quoted--to be empty.) FYI, a possible response might be: we care about freeness, but we pick our battle, and our battle is Debian main. I care about starving children, but I don't donate the majority of every check to feed them: there are lots of good causes, and the fact that everybody has to pick and choose their causes doesn't mean people don't care enough. (That said, I don't agree with that response: it should be no big deal for people to freely license their papers, so they can be packaged later in Debian. This isn't a big, difficult fight.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 07:49:36PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: FYI, a possible response might be: we care about freeness, but we pick our battle, and our battle is Debian main. I care about starving children, but I don't donate the majority of every check to feed them: there are lots of good causes, and the fact that everybody has to pick and choose their causes doesn't mean people don't care enough. (That said, I don't agree with that response: it should be no big deal for people to freely license their papers, so they can be packaged later in Debian. This isn't a big, difficult fight.) Why fight at all? If having a free license is so obviously correct, why force people to do it? If some people are uncomfortable with it, why fight that? My blog's licensed under the CC No-derivs/non-commerical license for much the same reasons as most of RMS's writings aren't DFSG-free; but that's fine -- I'm not trying to get them to become the basis of a developer community or similar, and that's why I'm not bothered by not having comments on my blog, either. Likewise my list posts (like this one) don't have any explicit license, just the implied license that evolves from knowingly posting to public mailing lists -- which gives people the right to quote and archive them, and the occassional fair use right, but certainly not enough to qualify for main in the strictest sense. My debbugs paper was licensed under the CC Attrib/ShareAlike license, which is relatively free, but also not DFSG-free apparently. OTOH, it's also already out of date. Of course, DFSG-free isn't all the dc6 organisers are insisting on, but the right to MIT/X11 recordings of presentations too -- not even giving presenters the option to copyleft the recording of their presentation for some reason. BTW, a question: if you say you must make your stuff DFSG-free, aren't you inspiring debate from people who don't want to, or who aren't comfortable with that, on why the DFSG isn't appropriate? If you made it optional or encouraged instead of compulsory, wouldn't that encourage debate on why the DFSG is good in the specific instances where people choose not to use free licenses? Wouldn't that be better? I'd prefer something like this: During and after the conference various materials will be made available to attendees and the general public; submission of a paper thus indicates permission to: * distribute verbatim copies and translations of the paper, slides and other materials provided by the presenter * distribute audio and video recordings of the presentation Presenters are encouraged to provide a specific license (preferably DFSG-free) under which the materials and presentation can be redistributed. Having the video/slide license appear as the first slide at each talk while the introduction's happening might be amusing. But not if it's just the BSD license each time :) Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
[replying to a message that was directed to debian-devel only, but readding debian-legal in Cc:] On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 09:38:07 +0100 Andreas Schuldei wrote: * Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-08 00:28:07]: The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license means that they *may* do so, but are not required to. Am I correct? IMHO, DebConf paper authors should be *required* to publish in a DFSG-free manner, as a condition for presenting at the conference. Don't you agree that seeing non-free or even undistributable (no license means All Rights Reserved, with current laws!) papers at a DebConf is really a shame? given your knowledge level of how debconf intents to handle things and the way you escalate this issue gives me the idea that you mainly want to raise a stink and create unrest. First of all, it is *not at all* my intention to raise stinks or create unrest. If I gave the impression of being rude, I apologize: I didn't want to. I am not an English native speaker, hence I may have chosen the wrong words or style when drafting my message; moreover I may have misunderstood something when reading the C4P (Call For Papers). So please inform yourself properly first. I visited http://debconf.org/ and failed to find any other relevant information about paper licensing, apart from the C4P itself. If you can point me to some URL where I can get first-hand info about how DebConf organizers plan to handle this kind of things, I would appreciate it. that might include to take up the issue in a friendly way with someone who is involved I think you are involved (!) and I did raise this issue with you privately (end of last August), but unfortunately the thread died out... Now your C4P for DebConf6 reminded me of the issue, so I went through it as carefully as I could searching for any indication on how it was handled. I found the above-quoted sentence (The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license) and felt it was not clear enough (again I am not an English native speaker, but many many people are not either). That is why I asked for clarification and, in case the sentence means what I'm afraid it does, I suggested a different policy... As to the friendliness, I tried hard to be as polite and friendly as I could. Again, if I failed, it's my fault: I apologize. I really appreciate your efforts to organize the best conference you can. I really *love* the idea of a conference entirely dedicated to Debian, to be held in a different place each time. That's why I consider this issue as an important one: every DebConf is an event through which we get public attention and can thus spread our philosophy. The message really works better if we act consistently with our philosophy, IMHO. or trying to submit a proposal, paper or even give a talk yourself. I really doubt I will be able to attend DebConf6, unfortunately. :-( You might also think about the organizers options when a speaker surprisingly NOT picks a DFSG free license, If the rules mandate a DFSG-free license (as I suggest), I think the only option for the organizers is to not include the paper/presentation/handout in the conference proceedings and to not distribute it through the conference website, until the licensing issue is solved. Just like a Debian package doesn't enter main, until it meets Policy requirements (DFSG-freeness being one of them). double-licenses his talk in an awkward way If you mean dual-licenses, then everything's fine as long as at least one of the chosen licenses makes the paper/presentation/handout DFSG-free. Otherwise, goto previous case. ;-) or declares before the audience that his talk must not be distributed. In that case the talk cannot be distributed through the conference website or in the proceedings. But this holds even if you do not mandate a DFSG-free license. Actually the C4P already requires some permissions from the authors: | Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, | presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials | used in conjunction with the presentation. Hence, you already have to plan what to do, when an author does not fulfill the C4P requirements. Correct me, if I'm wrong. Also consider the legal implications of an intention or promise to release a DFSG free talk vs the actual act of releasing the work and when that happens in a legally binding way. Then consider the character of the CFP as a legaly binding document for the licenses of the actual talks of the speakers. As I said above, the publication of papers/presentations/handouts is anyway subject to some conditions. What I suggest is simply adding one further condition. I hope I clarified what I mean... -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
* Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-11-08 00:28:07]: The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license means that they *may* do so, but are not required to. Am I correct? IMHO, DebConf paper authors should be *required* to publish in a DFSG-free manner, as a condition for presenting at the conference. Don't you agree that seeing non-free or even undistributable (no license means All Rights Reserved, with current laws!) papers at a DebConf is really a shame? given your knowledge level of how debconf intents to handle things and the way you escalate this issue gives me the idea that you mainly want to raise a stink and create unrest. So please inform yourself properly first. that might include to take up the issue in a friendly way with someone who is involved or trying to submit a proposal, paper or even give a talk yourself. You might also think about the organizers options when a speaker surprisingly NOT picks a DFSG free license, double-licenses his talk in an awkward way or declares before the audience that his talk must not be distributed. Also consider the legal implications of an intention or promise to release a DFSG free talk vs the actual act of releasing the work and when that happens in a legally binding way. Then consider the character of the CFP as a legaly binding document for the licenses of the actual talks of the speakers. But please do so alone, first. /andreas signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] Don't you agree that seeing non-free or even undistributable (no license means All Rights Reserved, with current laws!) papers at a DebConf is really a shame? I don't. Remember that non-free != evil, and that some of the arguments why free software is a good thing do not apply to expositions of scholary work or other conference contributions. People who think that intellectual property is in and of itself an evil concept are free to license their contributions liberally. But on the other hand, people who like free software for pragmatic reasons related to its being, well, software should not be forced to give away more rights than practically necessary for making the conference work. For example, it is common not to want to allow derived works for conference papers. That does not conflict with the SC, because the papers are not going to be part of our operating system. -- Henning Makholm Det er jo svært at vide noget når man ikke ved det, ikke? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
[Added Cc: debian-legal, because the topic may be of interest there, I would say.] [No need to Cc: me, as long as you keep Cc:ing debian-legal (just to make things clear: I am subscribed to debian-legal, but not to debian-devel)] On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:01:48 +0100 Andreas Schuldei wrote: Fine Print Publication Rights Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license means that they *may* do so, but are not required to. Am I correct? IMHO, DebConf paper authors should be *required* to publish in a DFSG-free manner, as a condition for presenting at the conference. Don't you agree that seeing non-free or even undistributable (no license means All Rights Reserved, with current laws!) papers at a DebConf is really a shame? The presentations will be recorded, and may be broadcast over the Internet. Any copies of the presentation will be made available under a license like the MIT/X11 license. This refers to audio/video recordings, IIUC. It seems that the same rules adopted for DebConf5 still hold for DebConf6. Good. -- :-( 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 pgpHsvUcbzJHS.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
On Monday 07 November 2005 11:28 pm, Francesco Poli wrote: [Added Cc: debian-legal, because the topic may be of interest there, I would say.] [No need to Cc: me, as long as you keep Cc:ing debian-legal (just to make things clear: I am subscribed to debian-legal, but not to debian-devel)] used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license means that they *may* do so, but are not required to. Am I correct? The way I read it was that the authors may pick any license, so long as it's DFSG-free. Do you see how it could be read that way? Now, because they are the copyright holders, they could additionally license it in some other way, too. But they must at least offer a DFSG-free license. -- Brian M. Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Running on GNU/kFreeBSD; i686-pc-kfreebsd-gnu Support alternative kernels in Debian! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OT: Humor: Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, Brian M. Carlson wrote: The way I read it was that the authors may pick any license, so long as it's DFSG-free. Do you see how it could be read that way? You sound just like Henry Ford. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: Humor: Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
On Tuesday 08 November 2005 01:58 am, Adam Heath wrote: On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, Brian M. Carlson wrote: The way I read it was that the authors may pick any license, so long as it's DFSG-free. Do you see how it could be read that way? You sound just like Henry Ford. My goal was to do exactly that. I was hoping someone would catch it. :-) -- Brian M. Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Running on GNU/kFreeBSD; i686-pc-kfreebsd-gnu Support alternative kernels in Debian! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
