Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 11:16:45PM +0200, Anton Zinoviev wrote: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 09:45:43PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: [ ] Choice 3: GFDL is DFSG-free and suitable for main in all cases [3:1] I need to correct this. The title for my proposal is [ ] Choice 3: GFDL is compatible with the current DFSG First, the whole text of my proposal talks entirely about the current DFSG. Second, my proposal doesn't revoke automatically the decision of the release team to remove the GFDL-documents from main. If my proposal wins, it is the release team who will have to change this decision Frankly, I have no idea what the release team is expected to do in this circumstance. In spite of the Project Secretary's determination that this ballot option requires a 3:1 supermajority because it modifies the DFSG, given that I can't reconcile these claims that the GFDL always complies with the DFSG with any (IMHO) reasonable reading of the DFSG themselves, I am left without a suitable consistent interpretation that I can apply in the exercise of my own duties. I guess I could: - ignore that the Project seems to have gone insane and issued a position statement that I can't grok, and continue treating GFDL works as RC for etch - ignore the Project Secretary's interpretation that this amendment implicitly modifies the DFSG, and continue treating GFDL works as RC for etch - accept that I don't understand how the Project as a whole interprets the DFSG, and defer to either the Technical Committee or the FTP Team regarding the RC-ness of all licensing bugs - start a new GR - resign and let somebody else deal with it - have an existential crisis Of course, 1 and 2 are pretty monomaniacal options and likely to piss off anyone who voted for the GR, eventually leading me to 5 or 6; 3 sounds pretty unsustainable, and likely to lead directly to 6 and then to 5 anyway over my inability to understand how people think; and 4 is a bunch of crap work that I really have no desire to do because it's a ridiculous side show to the work of actually building a free operating system... so might result in me defaulting to 5. The ambiguity of this ballot option, both in not actually proposing text modifications to the DFSG proper and in advancing a partial, one-off interpretation of the DFSG which does not provide any real guidance on the question of what limits on modification *are* acceptable to Debian, are IMHO a serious problem. Not only will I be voting this option below None of the above (which, apparently unlike Anthony[1], I believe to be the normal and proper thing to do with a ballot option I consider unacceptable even if I don't really want to *discuss* it further), I will be fervently hoping that this option doesn't win. Of course, if people actually believe that this ballot option is *true*, they should naturally still vote for it -- I just have no idea what it means for someone to believe it's true, and would much prefer a ballot option that advanced a consistent interpretation of the DFSG. -- 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/ [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/02/msg00415.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Quoting Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:16:43PM +0100, Jérôme Marant wrote: Quoting Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Well, maybe the people who mislabeled the everything is software vote as an editorial change and deceived many other developers should have tought about this. The only people it made happy are extremists. See #207932. Yes, thanks, that's a great example of how there are people on both sides of this issue that are capable of acting like children. Pass on giving it a second reading, it was nauseating enough to see it come through my mailbox the first time. I'm glad you enjoyed. It was a great fun. But, you know, since I'm not subscribed to -legal, I had to find another way. There was a choice between simply closing the silly bug, or playing a bit with extremists for free (as beer!!!) Ain't life grand?!! -- Jérôme Marant -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:22:12AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Second, my proposal doesn't revoke automatically the decision of the release team to remove the GFDL-documents from main. If my proposal wins, it is the release team who will have to change this decision Frankly, I have no idea what the release team is expected to do in this circumstance. Well, prior to the editorial amendments, the plan was drop non-DFSG-free docs/firmware anyway, in spite of them not being software and hence not required to be dropped anyway. You could do something similar and say well, they might not violate the DFSG, but that's a minimal bar, and we're going to set a higher one, so GFDL docs are still out. suckers! I can't see any reason to do that, though. In spite of the Project Secretary's determination that this ballot option requires a 3:1 supermajority because it modifies the DFSG, given that I can't reconcile these claims that the GFDL always complies with the DFSG with any (IMHO) reasonable reading of the DFSG themselves, I am left without a suitable consistent interpretation that I can apply in the exercise of my own duties. The interpretation being proposed seems to be the DFSG allows certain restrictions on modifications, including the GPL's interactivity notification stuff and the GFDL's unmodifiable sections, with others potentially to be determined later. That seems reasonably easy to apply: deal with the existing ones as is, and assume there'll be another vote in future should any more come up. I guess I could: - have an existential crisis Easiest action would seem to be to indicate clearly and up-front that the resolution will make GFDL docs not be an issue for inclusion in the archive or the release. In so far as that's yours (and ftpmaster's) decision, that doesn't seem to require anyone else's help to clarify. I have to say I continue to be unimpressed by the let's vote that the GFDL is ok, though that may or may not mean it's /actually/ ok! attitude. Uncertainty isn't a good thing. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 09:02:01AM +0100, Jérôme Marant wrote: Quoting Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:16:43PM +0100, Jérôme Marant wrote: Quoting Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Well, maybe the people who mislabeled the everything is software vote as an editorial change and deceived many other developers should have tought about this. The only people it made happy are extremists. See #207932. Yes, thanks, that's a great example of how there are people on both sides of this issue that are capable of acting like children. Pass on giving it a second reading, it was nauseating enough to see it come through my mailbox the first time. I'm glad you enjoyed. It was a great fun. But, you know, since I'm not subscribed to -legal, I had to find another way. There was a choice between simply closing the silly bug, or playing a bit with extremists for free (as beer!!!) Yeah, um, if you had closed the bug, I would have reopened it immediately. Unless you persuade the release managers that the GFDL complies with the DFSG, amend the DFSG so that it *does* comply, or invoke the technical committee, this is a release-critical issue for etch as listed on http://release.debian.org/etch_rc_policy.txt; playing BTS tennis isn't going to make that go away. I'm sorry, but whether something is a release-critical bug is just not your decision to make personally. -- 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/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR: Amendment: invariant-less in main v2
I second Adeodato's revised amendment, as I did the earlier version. Thanks to Adeodato and everyone who contributed... Hamish On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 06:26:27AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote: ---8--- Debian and the GNU Free Documentation License = This is the position of the Debian Project about the GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation: 1. We consider that the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 conflicts with traditional requirements for free software, since it allows for non-removable, non-modifiable parts to be present in documents licensed under it. Such parts are commonly referred to as invariant sections, and are described in Section 4 of the GFDL. As modifiability is a fundamental requirement of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, this restriction is not acceptable for us, and we cannot accept in our distribution works that include such unmodifiable content. 2. At the same time, we also consider that works licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License that include no invariant sections do fully meet the requirements of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. This means that works that don't include any Invariant Sections, Cover Texts, Acknowledgements, and Dedications (or that do, but permission to remove them is explicitly granted), are suitable for the main component of our distribution. 3. Despite the above, GFDL'd documentation is still not free of trouble, even for works with no invariant sections: as an example, it is incompatible with the major free software licenses, which means that GFDL'd text can't be incorporated into free programs. For this reason, we encourage documentation authors to license their works (or dual-license, together with the GFDL) under the same terms as the software they refer to, or any of the traditional free software licenses like the the GPL or the BSD license. ---8--- -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 06:59:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:22:12AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: In spite of the Project Secretary's determination that this ballot option requires a 3:1 supermajority because it modifies the DFSG, given that I can't reconcile these claims that the GFDL always complies with the DFSG with any (IMHO) reasonable reading of the DFSG themselves, I am left without a suitable consistent interpretation that I can apply in the exercise of my own duties. The interpretation being proposed seems to be the DFSG allows certain restrictions on modifications, including the GPL's interactivity notification stuff and the GFDL's unmodifiable sections, with others potentially to be determined later. That seems reasonably easy to apply: deal with the existing ones as is, and assume there'll be another vote in future should any more come up. The interpretation that I hold is the following: The license must give us permissions to modify the work in order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it, with no substantive limits on the nature of these changes, but there can be superficial requirements on how they are packaged. However this interpretation is not part of my proposal. My proposal invalidates some possible interpretations of DFSG but it doesn't state which interpretation is the correct one. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:54:27PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: It does prohibit some modifications which are useful. Geez, reference cards. Useful! You can make reference cards but if you make more than 100 copies you have to accompany the reference cards with additional sheet(s) of paper. The other licenses have the same limitation - you may not distribute the reference cards alone. Depending on the license you may be required to accompany each reference card with the full text of the license, with history who and when has edited the document, with the sources in machine readable format, various copyright notices, etc. Docstrings. Useful! Not prohibited by other free licenses! Wow! I don't understand what you mean by docstrings. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 04:12:38PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Err, that doeds not compute. If the developers decide that the GFDL is compatible, then is it not tantamount to overriding gthe decision taken? It is not as if the release team can go around doing otherwise. The vox populi has power :) Vox populi has the power to override the decision that GFDL-covered documents are non-free. But technicaly speaking the decision to remove these documents from main is a technical decision than may have other reasons (who knows? :-) ) than the non-freenes of the documents. Of course I can have nothing against the automatic overriding the decision so if everybody thinks my proposal overrides it, I am OK with this. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR: Amendment: invariant-less in main v2
* Nathanael Nerode [Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:51:33 -0500]: Hi, So, does this mean that if this amendment is passed, outlawing storing a copy of a document with non-world-readable permission is considered an acceptable, free restriction by the Developers? Really? I *hope* that this amendment is simply supposed to mean that the Developers don't believe that the DRM clause imposes such restrictions (despite the fact that reading it literally, it does). But at the moment, which of these two positions is being pushed by the amendment is not clear to me. Adeodato? The latter. From the last paragraph in my mail: | I don't see much point in carrying details about the other two issues, | when they don't affect us at all. Cheers, -- Adeodato Simó dato at net.com.org.es Debian Developer adeodato at debian.org Loan-department manager: There isn't any fine print. At these interest rates, we don't need it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
This one time, at band camp, Thomas Bushnell BSG said: Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes. Because I would trust the developers to see the amendment as the silly fraud that it would be, and vote it down. We don't need the Secretary's protection, believe it or not. Really? Even if a majority of the developers liked the idea? Remember, the 3:1 requirement is there to protect the remaining 25% against majorities as high as 74%. If 51% of developers vote for something that silly, there is not much we can do to save the project, frankly. Your attitude that we need hand holding and protection from ourselves is rather insulting. -- - | ,''`.Stephen Gran | | : :' :[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer | |`- http://www.debian.org | - signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:43:30PM +0200, Anton Zinoviev wrote: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 06:59:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:22:12AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: In spite of the Project Secretary's determination that this ballot option requires a 3:1 supermajority because it modifies the DFSG, given that I can't reconcile these claims that the GFDL always complies with the DFSG with any (IMHO) reasonable reading of the DFSG themselves, I am left without a suitable consistent interpretation that I can apply in the exercise of my own duties. The interpretation being proposed seems to be the DFSG allows certain restrictions on modifications, including the GPL's interactivity notification stuff and the GFDL's unmodifiable sections, with others potentially to be determined later. That seems reasonably easy to apply: deal with the existing ones as is, and assume there'll be another vote in future should any more come up. The interpretation that I hold is the following: The license must give us permissions to modify the work in order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it, with no substantive limits on the nature of these changes, but there can be superficial requirements on how they are packaged. However this interpretation is not part of my proposal. My proposal invalidates some possible interpretations of DFSG but it doesn't state which interpretation is the correct one. Which is for me a big problem, given that mine is one of those interpretations that's invalidated -- and, according to my reading, so is *yours*, since being unable to remove multiple pages of essays when borrowing a few paragraphs of text is a substantive limit. I don't really have anything to replace it with; Anthony's interpretation is certainly pragmatic, but I find it fundamentally unsatisfying. I'd probably take it over an existential crisis, though. ;) -- 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/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 03:06:03AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: The interpretation being proposed seems to be the DFSG allows certain restrictions on modifications, including the GPL's interactivity notification stuff and the GFDL's unmodifiable sections, with others potentially to be determined later. That seems reasonably easy to apply: deal with the existing ones as is, and assume there'll be another vote in future should any more come up. The interpretation that I hold is the following: The license must give us permissions to modify the work in order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it, with no substantive limits on the nature of these changes, but there can be superficial requirements on how they are packaged. However this interpretation is not part of my proposal. My proposal invalidates some possible interpretations of DFSG but it doesn't state which interpretation is the correct one. Which is for me a big problem, given that mine is one of those interpretations that's invalidated -- and, according to my reading, so is *yours*, since being unable to remove multiple pages of essays when borrowing a few paragraphs of text is a substantive limit. I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
* Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060210 11:36]: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:54:27PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: It does prohibit some modifications which are useful. Geez, reference cards. Useful! You can make reference cards but if you make more than 100 copies you have to accompany the reference cards with additional sheet(s) of paper. The other licenses have the same limitation - you may not distribute the reference cards alone. Depending on the license you may be required to accompany each reference card with the full text of the license, with history who and when has edited the document, with the sources in machine readable format, various copyright notices, etc. No, you cannot. At least I found nothing that allows to keep a invariant stuff out. There's is nothing restricting H. Include an unaltered copy of this License. (not that e.g. GPL speaks about give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program) or L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles. So a reference card is already quite complicated, a shortcut-cup is practically impossible. The 100 copies is only for front and back-cover texts and about a machine-readable non-opaque copy. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:54:27PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: It does prohibit some modifications which are useful. Geez, reference cards. Useful! You can make reference cards but if you make more than 100 copies you have to accompany the reference cards with additional sheet(s) of paper. The other licenses have the same limitation - you may not distribute the reference cards alone. Depending on the license you may be required to accompany each reference card with the full text of the license, with history who and when has edited the document, with the sources in machine readable format, various copyright notices, etc. You neglected to mention what happens about reference cards for documentation with invariant sections. Reference cards for Emacs and GCC would be most useful, but AFAICT both of these manuals have invariant sections. Docstrings. Useful! Not prohibited by other free licenses! Wow! I don't understand what you mean by docstrings. Did you try google? They are documentation inlined in the source code. Some languages (e.g. Python (DocStrings), Perl (POD), Common Lisp) have native support for it; other languages (C, ObjC, C++, Java) have special tools to extract the documentation (gtk-doc, doc++, doxygen, javadoc). If you want an example of it, grab a copy of https://alioth.debian.org/download.php/1437/schroot-0.2.2.tar.bz2, and look at the comments in schroot/*.h, then look at doc/schroot/html/index.html. Consider what happens if the documentation is extracted and incorporated into a manual with a GFDL licence, and the source is GPL. In other situations, we might want to incorporate parts of the manual into the source (for tooltips, help texts, usage examples, etc..). We certainly couldn't do that with a GFDL manual and GPL source. Regards, Roger -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpYcyAFqaIq2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Feb 09, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone come forward and said I was deceived by GR 2004-03? I Yes, multiple people did. HTH. Who? I can't recall any. Can you provide pointers? There was a rather heated debate at the time, I recall. What did they say in response to questions like did you read the changes? As someone who carefully read and then voted for the changes, I was rather taken aback by the (unforeseen, by myself and many others) implications of the changes. I wouldn't go so far as to call it deception, however; the text of the changes was quite clear. After considering it carefully, I would still have voted the same way, and hence I voted to keep the changes in the second vote. Several folks seem to wish to re-ignite the debate of whether or not the changes were editorial or not. Whether it was or was not, it's now over and done with. This GR is a separate, albeit related, issue. I'm still not entirely convinced that all documentation needs the same set of freedoms as programs. But the intersection of the freedoms we require of documentation, and the freedoms we require of programs gives us a very large common set of freedoms, with just one or two considerations which might be specific to one or the other. Given the huge problems of defining what is and is not documentation or programs, I'm still of the opinion that we should require and uphold the same set of freedoms of both, which obviously includes the ability to modify without restrictions on what is modifiable. Regards, Roger -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpt0PDGnb2Cj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 03:06:03AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: The interpretation that I hold is the following: The license must give us permissions to modify the work in order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it, with no substantive limits on the nature of these changes, but there can be superficial requirements on how they are packaged. However this interpretation is not part of my proposal. My proposal invalidates some possible interpretations of DFSG but it doesn't state which interpretation is the correct one. Which is for me a big problem, given that mine is one of those interpretations that's invalidated -- and, according to my reading, so is *yours*, since being unable to remove multiple pages of essays when borrowing a few paragraphs of text is a substantive limit. I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. As an example, the FSF do not appear to consider the ability to remove invariant sections necessary in the current version of the GFDL for example, whereas I (and others) do. The reference cards were just an example of this need; aggregate works were another, and there were several other real-world cases where a need was demonstrated. Applying your test, in my eyes, still leaves the GFDL a non-free licence. Could we draw this debate to some sort of conclusion? I continue to remain unconvinced by the majority of your arguments, many of which are still poorly explained. Regards, Roger -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpLAJneSEHGu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:52:33PM +0100, Bernhard R. Link wrote: * Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060210 11:36]: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:54:27PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: It does prohibit some modifications which are useful. Geez, reference cards. Useful! You can make reference cards but if you make more than 100 copies you have to accompany the reference cards with additional sheet(s) of paper. The other licenses have the same limitation - you may not distribute the reference cards alone. Depending on the license you may be required to accompany each reference card with the full text of the license, with history who and when has edited the document, with the sources in machine readable format, various copyright notices, etc. No, you cannot. At least I found nothing that allows to keep a invariant stuff out. There's is nothing restricting H. Include an unaltered copy of this License. (not that e.g. GPL speaks about give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program) or L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles. So a reference card is already quite complicated, a shortcut-cup is practically impossible. Both are possible. You ship the reference card or the cup together with the invariant sections printed on regular sheets of paper and the requirements of GFDL are satisfied. The 100 copies is only for front and back-cover texts and about a machine-readable non-opaque copy. Yes, you are right. If you want to ship the reference card in some electronic format, then the document has to contain on separate pages both the reference card and the invariant sectins. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:03:45PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: You neglected to mention what happens about reference cards for documentation with invariant sections. Reference cards for Emacs and GCC would be most useful, but AFAICT both of these manuals have invariant sections. Yes, they are useful, but GFDL doesn't make them impossible. You only have to accompany the reference card with the invariant sections printed on separate pages. Docstrings. Useful! Not prohibited by other free licenses! Wow! I don't understand what you mean by docstrings. Did you try google? They are documentation inlined in the source code. Some languages (e.g. Python (DocStrings), Perl (POD), Common Lisp) have native support for it; other languages (C, ObjC, C++, Java) have special tools to extract the documentation (gtk-doc, doc++, doxygen, javadoc). Ok. If you want an example of it, grab a copy of https://alioth.debian.org/download.php/1437/schroot-0.2.2.tar.bz2, and look at the comments in schroot/*.h, then look at doc/schroot/html/index.html. Consider what happens if the documentation is extracted and incorporated into a manual with a GFDL licence, and the source is GPL. We all know that GFDL is incompatible with GPL, but if the sorce was covered by BSD-like license there is no problem - you can satisfy the requirements of the BSD license by additional invariant section. In other situations, we might want to incorporate parts of the manual into the source (for tooltips, help texts, usage examples, etc..). We certainly couldn't do that with a GFDL manual and GPL source. Yes, it is not possible to incorporate such parts directly into the source so indirect way has to be used. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:33:05PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. I don't think we disagree what necessary means. As an example, the FSF do not appear to consider the ability to remove invariant sections necessary in the current version of the GFDL for example, whereas I (and others) do. The reference cards were just an example of this need; aggregate works were another, The reference cards do not require the removal of the invariant sections. You can print the invariant sections on separate sheet(s) of paper. and there were several other real-world cases where a need was demonstrated. I tried to list them in the following link and I don't think that a need was demonstrated in any of the examples. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/02/msg00226.html Applying your test, in my eyes, still leaves the GFDL a non-free licence. I understand that this seams so, but no example was given to prove this. Could we draw this debate to some sort of conclusion? I continue to remain unconvinced by the majority of your arguments, many of which are still poorly explained. If necessary I can try to explain better. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:33:05PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. I don't think we disagree what necessary means. Please answer the question I asked: Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? As an example, the FSF do not appear to consider the ability to remove invariant sections necessary in the current version of the GFDL for example, whereas I (and others) do. The reference cards were just an example of this need; aggregate works were another, The reference cards do not require the removal of the invariant sections. You can print the invariant sections on separate sheet(s) of paper. This is not a workable solution. I consider this a case where removal is necessary. When does this become so impractical as to be non-free? When there are 5 pages of invariant sections? 50? 500? [Don't bother answering this one; the debate has repeated the same arguments rather too many times already.] If necessary I can try to explain better. You have had ample opportunity to explain properly in the deluge of posts you have sent over the last few weeks. -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpURMwZ6G6Nk.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. No, it is not, because according to many of your fellow DDs the result of applying this test to a GFDL'ed document is that it is non-free. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Yavor Doganov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:15:08 +0100, Frank Küster wrote: And then, has nobody ever raised the rumor that the purpose of this GFDL is non-free hullaboo is just to make sure that we will have our non-free section, for ever? I feel it the same way. The same as who? Surely not as me. I should have added some irony indicators. The fact that people expressed the opinion that Debian doesn't consider non-free software as antisocial and unethical scares me a lot. There are several reasons why people are for Free Software, and for sure not all of them imply that any non-free software is antisocial or, even more, unethical. I am glad that Debian does not fix itself to a specific ideologic motivation *why* we produce a Free operating system, but instead confines itself to an practical definition of what Free Software means. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:36:54PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Peter Samuelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [Christopher Martin] If an issue is highly controversial, then I can think of no better way of settling it in a way that most developers will accept than a vote. People respect votes much more than decrees, even if they don't agree with them. And yet in this very thread we *still* have people whinging about GR 2004-03 being deceptive. (Yes, *after* you all had the opportunity in 2004-04 to repeal it, and didn't do so.) Either astounding or depressing. Has anyone come forward and said I was deceived by GR 2004-03? I wonder. I don't recall anyone saying that. Jerôme Marant, in this very thread, in a message you replied to (though he did not do so with the exact phrase above). -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, Ashes to Ashes, stardate 53679.4 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 2/9/06, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 05:18:18PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: On 2/9/06, Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: As it happens, it says nothing about implicit changes to foundation documents, or even about having to act in accord with them. Section 4.1.5.3 seems to say something about this issue. It doesn't use the exact words you've used, but the meaning of the words it does use seems more than adequate. It says how the documents can be superceded or withdrawn; it doesn't say anything about ignoring them outright, or changing the way they're interpreted. That's a strawman argument. The ballot options are not being ignored. Manoj is not leaving them off the ballot. The 3:1 supermajority issue is only relevant for options which are not being ignored. And Manoj is not changing the option. The option in question is making a statement about the DFSG. It says GNU Free Documentation License protects the freedom, it is compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines. But until the option has been accepted as a successful GR, the proposal is not something we as a project have agreed to. If it passes, then it will be true that this issue isn't a 3:1 supermajority issue, but if it does not pass then this will not be true. If it was true for us, without us having to vote on it, the this wouldn't be an issue I think it's a mistake for Manoj to have taken on that role in this case, but it's his choice. And that seems to be the right choice. I certainly would not want the secretary acting as if controversial proposals were a true of the project goals before they had been voted on. As far as the outcome's concerned, though, I don't think it matters either way -- I think Anton's amendment has received more than enough discussion that it ought to be voted above Further Discussion, and I think it's far better for us to decide what we want to do based on what we want and what we think, rather than attacking each other. I agree that voting on this issue is the best way to resolve it, and that attacking each other is not a good way of resolving anything. -- Raul
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 2/9/06, Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To impose the 3:1 requirement requires, beforehand, a judgment concerning the DFSG. Since no one has found a Secretarial basis for that power, it follows that to arbitrarily impose 3:1 supermajorities (when doing so on the basis of a personal interpretation of the DFSG) is not proper. That the 3:1 bit is mentioned in the constitution is quite irrelevant. All debian developers are required to understand and apply the DFSG -- the DFSG is critical to Debian. You don't need special powers to understand and apply the DFSG. Package maintainers are supposed to make judgements about the DFSG in the context of their packages. The same goes for the Secretary in the context of preparing the ballot. You can't argue that since the constitution doesn't explicitly forbid the Secretary to take it upon him/herself to interpret the DFSG for everyone else, that therefore he/she must do so, in order to discharge the constitutional duty of placing 3:1 supermajorities on amendments, etc. That's backwards. Essentially you'd be asserting that any delegate has _any power_ he or she deems necessary to fulfill his or her view of their own constitutional duties, unless explicitly forbidden, item by item, by the constitution. That's not my argument. And, likewise, you can't argue that the secretary must treat an option as accepted when preparing the ballot. Treating controversial general resolution proposals as if they'd already won the vote before the vote begins would be the very abuse of power you're alluding to. Because that's the only way I can see for getting from the constitution mentions that some votes should require 3:1 supermajorities to therefore the Secretary must be the constitutionally ordained arbiter of DFSG correctness for all votes. And this despite other constitutional verbiage that suggests that developers have that power. Huh. The Secretary is a developer. Indeed, section 4.1 states that the developers, by way of GRs or elections, have the power to issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements. These include documents describing the goals of the project, its relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian software must meet. They may also include position statements about issues of the day. The GFDL sounds like an issue of the day to me. Sure, and the constitution goes on and lists the procedure the developers follow when doing these things. And we're following those procedures. So where's the problem? The problem is that in the course of this procedure, the Secretary overstepped his authority, as I've explained above. You may not agree with that view, but I don't see why you should be so confused about my complaint. I've yet to see any description of your complaint that doesn't require me to accept that Anton's proposal is universally accepted by the project. But if I accept that Anton's proposal is universally accepted by the project, then the barrier you're talking about does not exist. So I'm faced with a contradiction: how can the Secretary be mis-using his power if this mis-use of power can only be a mis-use if it is not a mis-use? -- Raul
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] The reference cards do not require the removal of the invariant sections. You can print the invariant sections on separate sheet(s) of paper. Any work requiring waste of paper on that relative scale is not only not free as in freedom, but unethical and non-green. How will you rally your supporters? A large paper banner of Support FDL-in-main: no-one *needs* to reduce paper use? -- MJR/slef -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Stephen Gran [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This one time, at band camp, Thomas Bushnell BSG said: Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes. Because I would trust the developers to see the amendment as the silly fraud that it would be, and vote it down. We don't need the Secretary's protection, believe it or not. Really? Even if a majority of the developers liked the idea? Remember, the 3:1 requirement is there to protect the remaining 25% against majorities as high as 74%. If 51% of developers vote for something that silly, there is not much we can do to save the project, frankly. Your attitude that we need hand holding and protection from ourselves is rather insulting. This is not *my* attitude; it is the attitude of those who wanted a 3:1 supermajority for changes to the Foundation Documents. What did they mean by this, if not that a mere majority could not be trusted with such things? I was, in fact, *against* that change, though I didn't feel strongly about it, and did not vote. It is now the rule. I assume that those who put it forward thought a mere majority could not be trusted with such things. For the record, the proposer and seconders of that GR (2003-03): Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] Neil Roeth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Matthias Urlichs [EMAIL PROTECTED] Joe Nahmias [EMAIL PROTECTED] Simon Law [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 01:54:27PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: It does prohibit some modifications which are useful. Geez, reference cards. Useful! You can make reference cards but if you make more than 100 copies you have to accompany the reference cards with additional sheet(s) of paper. The other licenses have the same limitation - you may not distribute the reference cards alone. Depending on the license you may be required to accompany each reference card with the full text of the license, with history who and when has edited the document, with the sources in machine readable format, various copyright notices, etc. The Emacs Manual requires rather more than one additional sheet of paper. If a small footnote could handle it, that would be fine. Docstrings. Useful! Not prohibited by other free licenses! Wow! I don't understand what you mean by docstrings. Many programs, including GNU Emacs, include strings as part of the program which document the behavior of the program. (This is what is printed out when you use C-h f, for example.) Suppose gdb didn't already have docstrings, and you wanted to add them using text from the GDB manual. You would not be allowed to do this, because use of that manual text invokes the GFDL, and would require including the invariant sections in the program. This would contradict the GPL (because the GFDL and the GPL are incompatible). But this is not merely a license incompatibility. If GDB were under the BSD license, you still couldn't do this and have a free program, because the standards for free programs (even by the FSF's definition) are that they can't carry around invariant sections and still be a free program. When this problem was pointed out to the FSF, the response was that the manual author could just relicense the text so that you could put it in your program. This is of course irrelevant, but explains why the FSF doesn't see the problem. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We all know that GFDL is incompatible with GPL, but if the sorce was covered by BSD-like license there is no problem - you can satisfy the requirements of the BSD license by additional invariant section. But the resulting program would be a non-free program. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
GFDL GR summaries
Thorough summaries written by representative proponents and opponents of each principal side of the GFDL debate would be well received at this time. Such summaries are requested. For other DDs, I cannot speak, but such summaries would likely decide my vote at least. To clarify the request: Neither individual views nor random comments from random people are solicited here; the great debate stretching back years in many threads on several lists has already done that. Nor is this message to try to cut off debate in other threads, which I have no right to do. It is only to ask those who feel that they can summarize their sides' respective cases, and who feel that they can reason in summary against the other cases, to do so. Rebuttals will of course then be welcome, but this is no call for a new debate. Who summarizes? I lack authority as referee, so the several sides must decide who among themselves. However, if they post summaries in reply to this message then I will index the summaries and submit the index to DWN for wider publicity. Thank you for the illuminating and very thorough debate to date. It is well appreciated. So many deep points have been made on the several sides, it is extremely hard now to decide how to vote. -- Thaddeus H. Black 508 Nellie's Cave Road Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA +1 540 961 0920, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
unsubscribe
Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb am 10.02.06 05:13:11: On Thursday 09 February 2006 20:26, Raul Miller wrote: On 2/9/06, Christopher Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But why does the Secretary get to decide whether this barrier should be set or not? The constitution says: ... the final decision on the form of ballot(s) is the Secretary's - see 7.1(1), 7.1(3) and A.3(4). I think that's pretty clear. Sure, no one denies the Secretary the power to conduct votes within procedural guidelines. I think it's pretty clear here that the Secretary is not exceeding his powers in any way, shape or form. But it doesn't follow from the final decision on the form of ballot(s) that the Secretary is the DFSG arbiter. You'd think the constitution would have mentioned that. For instance, if the Secretary refused to include a GR amendment in a vote because he/she hated the proposer and merely declared it just plain stupid, we can probably all agree that the Secretary would be acting improperly, despite his/her constitutional power to decide the shape of votes. So final decision on the form of ballot(s) is not some limitless purview. And since the constitution explicitly grants developers broad powers over defining documents, issuing statements, etc. (but not the Secretary) it seems that the most sound interpretation of the constitution is that the Secretary is not the DFSG arbiter, and should allow matters of interpretation of the DFSG to be settled by simple vote amongst the developers. This means refraining from imposing supermajorities on disputes over DFSG interpretation, despite strong personal views. Christopher Martin __ Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:07:00AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: The Emacs Manual requires rather more than one additional sheet of paper. If a small footnote could handle it, that would be fine. You can not include the whole text of GPL in a footnote either, not to mention that you are not allowed to include the text of GPL anywhere in the document. You have to distribute it printed separately. Suppose gdb didn't already have docstrings, and you wanted to add them using text from the GDB manual. You would not be allowed to do this, because use of that manual text invokes the GFDL, and would require including the invariant sections in the program. This would contradict the GPL (because the GFDL and the GPL are incompatible). But this is not merely a license incompatibility. It is merely a license incompatibility as I will show below. If GDB were under the BSD license, you still couldn't do this and have a free program, because the standards for free programs (even by the FSF's definition) are that they can't carry around invariant sections and still be a free program. If GDB were under BSD, you could: 1. Add docstrings to the sources of GDB in a way permissible by GFDL. In particular the invariant sections should be present in all opaque copies of the produced documentation. GFDL does not place restrictions on how the invariant sections are present in the transparent form, so it is enough if they exist in separate files. 2. Add the text of the BSD license in a new invariant section. 3. Use the following license for the new GDB sources: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify THE NAME under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. Additionally, you have permission to use the non-commented parts of the sources of THE NAME under the following license: INCLUDE THE BSD LICENSE HERE When this problem was pointed out to the FSF, the response was that the manual author could just relicense the text so that you could put it in your program. This is of course irrelevant, but explains why the FSF doesn't see the problem. Whenever we have license incompatibility the only solution is to ask the author to relicense the text. BTW, with some tricks it is possible to use docstrings from GFDL document even in a GPL-covered program (you distribute the GPL and GFDL parts only separately and combine them only when you want to edit the sources; it is possible to do the combining and the separation automatically). Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 01:41:42PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. I don't think we disagree what necessary means. Please answer the question I asked: Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? OK. The modification is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need if there is no way to adapt the document to serve the purpose in question without this modification. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:07:31AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We all know that GFDL is incompatible with GPL, but if the sorce was covered by BSD-like license there is no problem - you can satisfy the requirements of the BSD license by additional invariant section. But the resulting program would be a non-free program. In this paragraph I was talking about the opposite process - you can borrow already existing docstrings from a BSD-licensed program and include them in your free GFDL covered manual. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:07:31AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We all know that GFDL is incompatible with GPL, but if the sorce was covered by BSD-like license there is no problem - you can satisfy the requirements of the BSD license by additional invariant section. But the resulting program would be a non-free program. In this paragraph I was talking about the opposite process - you can borrow already existing docstrings from a BSD-licensed program and include them in your free GFDL covered manual. But that isn't my point. My point is that you can't include the GFDL'd material in any free program. (Or, by doing so, you render the program non-free.) This is not controversial; even the FSF agrees. The question is, is it an important thing to be able to do? I think the answer is obviously yes. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If GDB were under BSD, you could: 1. Add docstrings to the sources of GDB in a way permissible by GFDL. In particular the invariant sections should be present in all opaque copies of the produced documentation. GFDL does not place restrictions on how the invariant sections are present in the transparent form, so it is enough if they exist in separate files. 2. Add the text of the BSD license in a new invariant section. 3. Use the following license for the new GDB sources: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify THE NAME under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. Additionally, you have permission to use the non-commented parts of the sources of THE NAME under the following license: INCLUDE THE BSD LICENSE HERE And the result would be a *non-free program*. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:55:11AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: But that isn't my point. My point is that you can't include the GFDL'd material in any free program. (Or, by doing so, you render the program non-free.) This is not controversial; even the FSF agrees. This won't be true if you use dual licensing. I showed one way to achieve this in http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/02/msg00472.html The question is, is it an important thing to be able to do? I think the answer is obviously yes. Ofcourse I agree that the answer is 'yes'. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:55:34AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If GDB were under BSD, you could: 1. Add docstrings to the sources of GDB in a way permissible by GFDL. In particular the invariant sections should be present in all opaque copies of the produced documentation. GFDL does not place restrictions on how the invariant sections are present in the transparent form, so it is enough if they exist in separate files. 2. Add the text of the BSD license in a new invariant section. 3. Use the following license for the new GDB sources: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify THE NAME under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. Additionally, you have permission to use the non-commented parts of the sources of THE NAME under the following license: INCLUDE THE BSD LICENSE HERE And the result would be a *non-free program*. This is strange. :-) The program is covered under BSD license and you say it is non-free. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:37:59AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: You can't argue that since the constitution doesn't explicitly forbid the Secretary to take it upon him/herself to interpret the DFSG for everyone else, that therefore he/she must do so, in order to discharge the constitutional duty of placing 3:1 supermajorities on amendments, etc. That's backwards. Essentially you'd be asserting that any delegate has _any power_ he or she deems necessary to fulfill his or her view of their own constitutional duties, unless explicitly forbidden, item by item, by the constitution. That's not my argument. And, likewise, you can't argue that the secretary must treat an option as accepted when preparing the ballot. Treating controversial general resolution proposals as if they'd already won the vote before the vote begins would be the very abuse of power you're alluding to. So by this reasoning, is the original GR proposal not controversial, whereas the other two amendments are? What's the key difference, if it isn't that the Project Secretary thinks one is correct and the others are not? -- 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/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 01:41:42PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. I don't think we disagree what necessary means. Please answer the question I asked: Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? OK. The modification is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need if there is no way to adapt the document to serve the purpose in question without this modification. Please could you still answer my question: *Who* defines what is necessary? Your partial answer above also appears to be nothing more than your personal opinion. Can you properly justify your reasoning with a detailed rationale? I think we need something rather more concrete than the personal opinion of a single developer for something which has important ramifications. It's all still rather too vague and handwavy to be of any practical use. Regards, Roger -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpFdHvnAo8VM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:55:34AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If GDB were under BSD, you could: 1. Add docstrings to the sources of GDB in a way permissible by GFDL. In particular the invariant sections should be present in all opaque copies of the produced documentation. GFDL does not place restrictions on how the invariant sections are present in the transparent form, so it is enough if they exist in separate files. 2. Add the text of the BSD license in a new invariant section. 3. Use the following license for the new GDB sources: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify THE NAME under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. Additionally, you have permission to use the non-commented parts of the sources of THE NAME under the following license: INCLUDE THE BSD LICENSE HERE And the result would be a *non-free program*. This is strange. :-) The program is covered under BSD license and you say it is non-free. Anton, please consider what you are writing before posting. What you wrote is content free and completely uninformative (as was the post you are replying to). There is no explanation at all, so we are non the wiser than had you not posted at all. This is not at all helpful. Thanks for your consideration, Roger -- Roger Leigh Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail. pgpw4NuJs1nWo.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:59:59PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 01:41:42PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: I think the following is an useful test. If the license forbids some modification that is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need, then the document is non-free. Otherwise, that is if the license does not forbid any necessary modification, the document may be free. This is no good. Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? What /I/ consider to be necessary may be considered unnecessary (and hence, not allowed) by the copyright holders. I don't think we disagree what necessary means. Please answer the question I asked: Where is it defined what is necessary, and who deems what is necessary? OK. The modification is necessary in order to adapt the document to some need if there is no way to adapt the document to serve the purpose in question without this modification. Please could you still answer my question: *Who* defines what is necessary? Your partial answer above also appears to be nothing more than your personal opinion. Can you properly justify your reasoning with a detailed rationale? I think we need something rather more concrete than the personal opinion of a single developer for something which has important ramifications. It's all still rather too vague and handwavy to be of any practical use. I realy don't know what you want. I proposed a test, you asked what necessary means and I answered. You are free to accept this test together with my answer, or you can use your own meaning of necessary, or you can reject that test completely. In this thread Steve Langasek asked how he could understand DFSG in a way under which GFDL would be a free license. I proposed one particular way - the way I understand DFSG. However I am not trying to persuade anyone that my way is the only way. If you want, I can try to explain why this is a reasonable way to understand DFSG, but it is definitely not the only possible way. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 09:08:54PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:55:34AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If GDB were under BSD, you could: 1. Add docstrings to the sources of GDB in a way permissible by GFDL. In particular the invariant sections should be present in all opaque copies of the produced documentation. GFDL does not place restrictions on how the invariant sections are present in the transparent form, so it is enough if they exist in separate files. 2. Add the text of the BSD license in a new invariant section. 3. Use the following license for the new GDB sources: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify THE NAME under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. Additionally, you have permission to use the non-commented parts of the sources of THE NAME under the following license: INCLUDE THE BSD LICENSE HERE And the result would be a *non-free program*. This is strange. :-) The program is covered under BSD license and you say it is non-free. Anton, please consider what you are writing before posting. What you wrote is content free and completely uninformative (as was the post you are replying to). There is no explanation at all, so we are non the wiser than had you not posted at all. This is not at all helpful. Thomas wrote the result would be a *non-free program* and I replied by the program is covered under BSD license. There is no way for me to know whether he noticed that fact and I think it would be impolite to ask him directly. That said, I agree that the comment This is strange was not completely appropriate. I had to write Could you explain this. Please, notice that the program is covered by BSD license. Returning back to the topic, we have the following situation: 1. The binary form of GDB would be covered under BSD license 2. The source files used to build GDB would be covered under combination of licenses that permits to modify them in every possible way. Anton Zinoviev -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:43:30 +0200, Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
The interpretation that I hold is the following:
The license must give us permissions to modify the work in
order to adapt it to various needs or to improve it, with no
substantive limits on the nature of these changes, but there can be
superficial requirements on how they are packaged.
I'm a bit surprised nobody has brought this up yet (but maybe I'm just
crazy): invariant sections prevent improvements to the invariant
sections.
Leaving aside the (seemingly) highly charged issue of the Emacs manual
and the GNU Manifesto, let's go into the fantasy world. Let's say that
I write some software, and some documentation for it. Suppose that I
license the documentation under the GFDL, and I include an essay about
why I like free software as an invariant section. Suppose that I make
some good, new, convincing arguments (that's where the fantasy comes
in), but my writing style is a bit off at times (that part would be
reality). And then there's that part where I go off on a tangent about
my pet platypus...
Since the essay is an invariant section, it prevents anyone from taking
my essay, keeping the good bits, fixing my terrible writing style (and
correcting my tpyos), and turning it into something that you could put
on a manager's desk and convince them of the value of using and
developing free software. Is that not a useful modification?
P.S. For those who say that we don't have software licenses that include
non-modifiable bits because they prevent useful modifications, is the
following a free software license?
/* Permission is granted for distribution of verbatim or modified copies
of this program in source or binary forms under the condition that
contents of the variable invariant are not deleted or modified, and
that you do not prevent the compiler from including its contents from
the resulting binary.
*/
#include stdio.h
char *invariant = My pet aardvark likes free software because... {insert essay
here};
int main (void)
{
printf (This program does something useful.\n);
return 0;
}
--
Hubert Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7 5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
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Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is strange. :-) The program is covered under BSD license and you say it is non-free. No. The resulting program is covered under the BSD license and the GFDL together. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Returning back to the topic, we have the following situation: 1. The binary form of GDB would be covered under BSD license Wrong. Because the binary would be including text from the manual, it would be covered under the GFDL too. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG4 and combined works
Anton Zinoviev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:55:11AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: But that isn't my point. My point is that you can't include the GFDL'd material in any free program. (Or, by doing so, you render the program non-free.) This is not controversial; even the FSF agrees. This won't be true if you use dual licensing. I showed one way to achieve this in http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/02/msg00472.html However, the resulting program is *not* a free program! I cannot include GFDL'd text in a BSD-licensed program without *changing the license to require the GFDL's terms*. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:25:10AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: It says how the documents can be superceded or withdrawn; it doesn't say anything about ignoring them outright, or changing the way they're interpreted. That's a strawman argument. The ballot options are not being ignored. I didn't say anything about the ballot options being ignored -- I said the constitution doesn't say anything about ignoring foundation documents -- ie the social contract or the DFSG. We're actually doing that right now in a sense, by continuing to leave bugs like #199810 unfixed. I certainly would not want the secretary acting as if controversial proposals were a true of the project goals before they had been voted on. Instead, he's acting as though they're false before they've been voted on -- personally, I don't think that's any better. A controversial false statement is just the inverse of a controversial true statement, afterall. Anyway, I think I've said my piece. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 9 Feb 2006, Christopher Martin uttered the following: No, we'd like the issue settled in a _legitimate_ fashion. And I take umbrage at your insinuations. May I take umbrage at your insinuation that the vote to modify the social contract was illegitimate? Actually, the amount of umbrage I can bring myself to experience is somewhat tepid, since I am not sure I care a whit about your opinion anyway. manoj -- In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket. 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: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 8 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns stated: Personally, I hope and trust that the developer body are honourable enough to note vote for a proposal they think contradicts the social contract or DFSG; and I don't see much point to all the implications that we're not that honourable and need to have the secretary's adult supervision. I don't see much point to all the grumbling about the secretary's supervision either though -- if we're acting like adult's anyway, that's hardly a problem, is it? I find it strange you couch this in terms of honour and supervision. I do not understand how this can be; and I certainly do not hold this view, since I do not even understand it. I view this a ballot correctness issue. The ballot should be one that does not lead to contradictory situations,or else, in my opinion, the ballot is buggy. manoj -- Killing turkeys causes winter. 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: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 9 Feb 2006, Christopher Martin told this: You're stuck in a loop. I know perfectly well that to change a foundation document requires 3:1, but the question is, who decides what is and is not a contradiction or change to the foundation documents and so needs 3:1? You? The Secretary? Someone has to, and I think the developers should. Because in the end, if the developers go completely mad and decide that EVERYTHING IS DFSG FREE, 3:1 won't stop them for long. They could just elect a like-minded DPL, replace the Secretary with someone more pliant, hold another vote... Please feel free to start the proceedings. Until then, I shall continue to act in a manner which I feel is a correct interpretation of my constitutional duties. The point is, you either trust the developers to be sane, or you don't and therefore think that you, or someone who agrees with you, should simply decide things by fiat. I don't accept that. As I have said, I do not see this as a matter of trust or honor or any of those things. I see this as a correctness of ballot issue. And it is quite possible for the developers to want to change/suspend the foundation documents, while being perfectly aware of what they're doing. Hence 3:1. Like in the vote to delay the editorial changes until post-Sarge. See, the system can work. Of course, the people who wanted the 3:1 supermajority are largely those who wanted to keep non-free in the Debian archive. In this way, the necessary changes to the Social Contract could be defeated. Ah, now it turns out that this works both ways. Suddenly we hear calls for strict majoritarianism. I have no idea what you're talking about. Nobody is calling for strict majoritarianism. What is being called for is that the developers be allowed to decide issues of interpretation of the DFSG, as is their prerogative. Adedato's amendment seeks to interpret the DFSG, and is being ``allowed'' to do so. Interpretation of the DFSG is not the isseu. However, something that contravenese a clear dictum of the DFSG is a different story. manoj -- Life sucks, but it's better than the alternative. Peter da Silva 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: GFDL GR, vote please!
On 9 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns told this: On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 04:03:48PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: I am away from home, so I can't sign this email. However, we can not hold a vote until the minimal discussion period is over, which makes it Feb 23,rd at the earliest, so I'll probably do it Feb 25th. I'm pretty sure that's incorrect, as per my mail: You are entitled to an opinion, of course. The original proposal became formal with Roger Leigh's second, on the 12th of January, and as no further amendments were accepted, a call for a vote is appropriate any time two weeks after that (from the 26th of January), as per A.2(1) and A.2(4). 4.2(4): the minimum discussion period is 2 weeks (and hasn't been varied) A.2(4): the minimum discussion period is counted from the time (a) the last formal amendment was accepted Adeodato's new proposal was formally accepted yesterday. I think your error is in interpretng the accepted to imply the original GR propoer accepting the amendment, I see it as an amendment being accepted as an alternate on the ballot. If there is an option on the ballot, there should be adequate time to discuss it. Indeed, a new option on the ballot may present novel idea, and having a vote without discussion of the new option seems ... odd. (b) the whole resolution was proposed if no amendments have been proposed and accepted A.1(1): amendments may be made formal by being proposed and sponsored, so there were three formal amendments, Adeodato's first, Anton's, and Adeodato's second. A.1(2): A formal amendment may be accepted by the resolution's proposer, which didn't happen for any of these, so there were no formal amendments that have been proposed and accepted, so (b) holds The whole resolution was proposed on 11th Jan 2006 21:53:43 +1000, and received sufficient sponsors at 12th Jan 2006 09:59:20 +. So the minimum discussion period ended on the 26th Jan 2006 09:59:20 +, afaics. Since the initial draft of the GR was posted 1st January, we've already been discussing this for six weeks, so I don't think there's any need for another two weeks on this. Adeodato's new proposal has not had any discussion that I can see. I would be interested in the thoughts of people who sponsored the opriginal GR on why the original deserves to be voted above adeodato's proposal. Look at section A.1.6, which specifies what changes to a proposal do not restart the minimum discussion period. That allows the original resolution to be changed in some cases without the discussion period restarting. I think distinct options on a ballot count as independent proposals for related issues. manoj -- The problem here (as someon else stated) is that when multiple dists use the same package format it only gives a false sense of compatibility. -- Stephen Carpenter 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: GFDL GR, vote please!
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If there is an option on the ballot, there should be adequate time to discuss it. Indeed, a new option on the ballot may present novel idea, and having a vote without discussion of the new option seems ... odd. This is true, but note that this would permit any group of five people to delay a vote as long as they want. So this would require the Secretary to be alert to the possibility of dilatory amendments, and refuse to accept them in that case. I'm happy with this course, because I trust the Secretary to exercise discretion appropriately. Others may find it objectionable, however. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 09:02:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: The original proposal became formal with Roger Leigh's second, on the 12th of January, and as no further amendments were accepted, a call for a vote is appropriate any time two weeks after that (from the 26th of January), as per A.2(1) and A.2(4). 4.2(4): the minimum discussion period is 2 weeks (and hasn't been varied) A.2(4): the minimum discussion period is counted from the time (a) the last formal amendment was accepted Adeodato's new proposal was formally accepted yesterday. According to the usage in the constitution, it was made formal yesterday, by receiving enough seconds. The term formal in relation to GRs is used only in A.1 and A.2(4). A.1(1) indicates an amendment can be made formal simply by being proposed and sponsored; or directly by the original proposer. This has happened for Adeodato's amendment, making it a formal amendment. A.1(2) indicates accepted amendments are distinct from formal amendments by providing a means for an amendment that is already formal to become accepted. A.1(3) provides the other branch of that, by indicating what should happen when a formal amendment is not accepted. The only uses of the term accepted are in A.1(2,3,4), A.2(4), and A.4; A.1(2) and A.1(4) talk specifically about being accepted by the original proposer, and A.1(3) also talks about the acceptance by the proposer. A.4 talks primarily about unaccepted amendments, which already have sponsors and which may be kept alive should the proposer withdraw the amendment, or should any sponsors withdraw their sponsorship. That leaves A.2(4) which spells out that the amendments it talks about must both be formal and accepted, and proposed and accepted. I think your error is in interpretng the accepted to imply the original GR propoer accepting the amendment, I see it as an amendment being accepted as an alternate on the ballot. I don't believe there's an error in the above -- it's a consistent reading of the terms used in the constitution. The alternative reading you propose means that accepted means one thing in three paragraphs immediately preceeding the section we're talking about, and a paragraph shortly after it; but something completely different -- and redundant, given the formality is already specified -- in the one we're looking at. If there is an option on the ballot, there should be adequate time to discuss it. Certainly; and there has been. Adeodato's update is a change of wording the reasons for which have already been discussed in depth over the past few weeks. In any event, the secretary does have absolute discretion in delaying running the vote after the call for vote comes out, so if you feel it's appropriate you can delay it for two weeks or two months anyway. But that's a different thing to saying that the minimum discussion period /requires/ the vote to be delayed an additional two weeks. Beyond the six people can delay a vote indefinitely consideration, it also introduces a different problem; namely that delaying the call for a vote so someone working on amendment can tidy it up becomes a bad tradeoff for the initial proposer -- I could've gotten the CFV out three weeks earlier than you're suggesting if I'd ignored Adeodato's desire to improve his amendment (and avoid the 3:1 requirement) by calling for a vote at the start of the week. Indeed, a new option on the ballot may present novel idea, and having a vote without discussion of the new option seems ... odd. Even if the vote were automated and had started immediately, there's still two weeks in which people can discuss the issue and change their vote. And this topic's been under discussion for years already, and this GR itself has already in discussion for over a month; more discussion isn't what we need here. So the minimum discussion period ended on the 26th Jan 2006 09:59:20 +, afaics. Since the initial draft of the GR was posted 1st January, we've already been discussing this for six weeks, so I don't think there's any need for another two weeks on this. Adeodato's new proposal has not had any discussion that I can see. I would be interested in the thoughts of people who sponsored the opriginal GR on why the original deserves to be voted above adeodato's proposal. As one of the sponsors, you can satisfy that desire yourself as well as anyone else can :) Look at section A.1.6, which specifies what changes to a proposal do not restart the minimum discussion period. That allows the original resolution to be changed in some cases without the discussion period restarting. I think distinct options on a ballot count as independent proposals for related issues. That's utterly absurd: the proposals are directly contradictory; they're not even remotely independent. Besides which they were all proposed as amendments. In summary, I don't think a pedantic reading of the
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:34:53PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On 8 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns stated: Personally, I hope and trust that the developer body are honourable enough to note vote for a proposal they think contradicts the social contract or DFSG; and I don't see much point to all the implications that we're not that honourable and need to have the secretary's adult supervision. I don't see much point to all the grumbling about the secretary's supervision either though -- if we're acting like adult's anyway, that's hardly a problem, is it? I find it strange you couch this in terms of honour and supervision. I do not understand how this can be; and I certainly do not hold this view, since I do not even understand it. I view this a ballot correctness issue. The ballot should be one that does not lead to contradictory situations,or else, in my opinion, the ballot is buggy. That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. Personally, I'd rather the secretarial role be as automatic as possible, even to the point where votes would be run without any human intervention. I've thought about that before, but I don't have the inclination to write any code for it. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. Often the role of a Secretary is a ministerial one, and which wouldn't include supervisory elements. However, Debian is different, giving to the Secretary a variety of supervisory tasks, similar to those a chairmain has in chairing a meeting. Indeed, our Constitution gives to the Secretary the task of interpreting the Constitution in cases of doubt. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. Personally, I'd rather the secretarial role be as automatic as possible, even to the point where votes would be run without any human intervention. I've thought about that before, but I don't have the inclination to write any code for it. I'd much rather there be someone whose job it is to understand and interpret the constitution and to point out to people when what they're trying to do in a GR doesn't make sense under the constitution, won't have the effect they're aiming for, or will involve complications that they don't realize. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On 10 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns outgrape: That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. The secretary is responsible for running the vote, and also has the final decision for the form of the ballot. It would be remiss of me to let a ballot go by which i consider incorrect. Personally, I'd rather the secretarial role be as automatic as possible, even to the point where votes would be run without any human intervention. I've thought about that before, but I don't have the inclination to write any code for it. You know how to change the constitution. Currently, the secretaries role is far from being a rubber stamp. manoj -- To program is to be. 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: GFDL GR, vote please!
On 10 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns verbalised: On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 09:02:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: The original proposal became formal with Roger Leigh's second, on the 12th of January, and as no further amendments were accepted, a call for a vote is appropriate any time two weeks after that (from the 26th of January), as per A.2(1) and A.2(4). 4.2(4): the minimum discussion period is 2 weeks (and hasn't been varied) A.2(4): the minimum discussion period is counted from the time (a) the last formal amendment was accepted Adeodato's new proposal was formally accepted yesterday. According to the usage in the constitution, it was made formal yesterday, by receiving enough seconds. The term formal in relation to GRs is used only in A.1 and A.2(4). A.1(1) indicates an amendment can be made formal simply by being proposed and sponsored; or directly by the original proposer. This has happened for Adeodato's amendment, making it a formal amendment. A.1 is talking about acceptance by the proposer, which I agree. A.1(2) indicates accepted amendments are distinct from formal amendments by providing a means for an amendment that is already formal to become accepted. A.1(3) provides the other branch of that, by indicating what should happen when a formal amendment is not accepted. The only uses of the term accepted are in A.1(2,3,4), A.2(4), and A.4; A.1(2) and A.1(4) talk specifically about being accepted by the original proposer, and A.1(3) also talks about the acceptance by the proposer. A.4 talks primarily about unaccepted amendments, which already have sponsors and which may be kept alive should the proposer withdraw the amendment, or should any sponsors withdraw their sponsorship. That leaves A.2(4) which spells out that the amendments it talks about must both be formal and accepted, and proposed and accepted. I think your error is in interpretng the accepted to imply the original GR propoer accepting the amendment, I see it as an amendment being accepted as an alternate on the ballot. I don't believe there's an error in the above -- it's a consistent reading of the terms used in the constitution. The alternative reading you propose means that accepted means one thing in three paragraphs immediately preceeding the section we're talking about, and a paragraph shortly after it; but something completely different -- and redundant, given the formality is already specified -- in the one we're looking at. Such is my interpretation of the intent of the discussion period, yes. If there is an option on the ballot, there should be adequate time to discuss it. Certainly; and there has been. Adeodato's update is a change of wording the reasons for which have already been discussed in depth over the past few weeks. The reasons for the change have been discussed, the ramifications of the new working have not. I certainly think I would welcome arguments from either side of this new option on the ballot. In any event, the secretary does have absolute discretion in delaying running the vote after the call for vote comes out, so if you feel it's appropriate you can delay it for two weeks or two months anyway. But that's a different thing to saying that the minimum discussion period /requires/ the vote to be delayed an additional two weeks. Err, I am saying that. This is not a new interpretation; I have always maintained, often in public, that the DOS effect of rejected amendments can delay a vote indefinitely, and that the secretary must then step in and stop that. Beyond the six people can delay a vote indefinitely consideration, it also introduces a different problem; namely that delaying the call for a vote so someone working on amendment can tidy it up becomes a bad tradeoff for the initial proposer -- I could've gotten the CFV out three weeks earlier than you're suggesting if I'd ignored Adeodato's desire to improve his amendment (and avoid the 3:1 requirement) by calling for a vote at the start of the week. Anton's proposal had already reset the discussion period. Indeed, a new option on the ballot may present novel idea, and having a vote without discussion of the new option seems ... odd. Even if the vote were automated and had started immediately, there's still two weeks in which people can discuss the issue and change their vote. And this topic's been under discussion for years already, and this GR itself has already in discussion for over a month; more discussion isn't what we need here. In general, and this case in particular, a two week delay for discussion on a topic where every day produces several emails is not a bad idea -- specially now a new option is also on the table. So the minimum discussion period ended on the 26th Jan 2006 09:59:20 +, afaics. Since the initial draft of the GR was posted 1st January, we've already been discussing this for six
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:10:20PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: Personally, I'd rather the secretarial role be as automatic as possible, even to the point where votes would be run without any human intervention. I've thought about that before, but I don't have the inclination to write any code for it. I'd much rather there be someone whose job it is to understand and interpret the constitution and to point out to people when what they're trying to do in a GR doesn't make sense under the constitution, won't have the effect they're aiming for, or will involve complications that they don't realize. You don't need any special powers to do that, though, so there's no reason to expect that to be the secretary's job, rather than any developer's. And on the upside, if the person doing it doesn't have any special powers, they can't very well be accused of abusing them (or threatening to abuse them, or whatever else) when they make those points... (It would also mean that any interpretation is done when the code's being written; so the decisions are predicatable in advance, and if any of them appear to be wrong, they can be debated in advance, rather than being a distraction from a substantive debate that's trying to happen at the same time) Obviously it rules out any implicit interpretations, in the sense that the act of coding up the rules would make them explicit by definition. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:08:32PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. Often the role of a Secretary is a ministerial one, and which wouldn't include supervisory elements. However, Debian is different, giving to the Secretary a variety of supervisory tasks, That's not true; the secretary's position in Debian is primarily administrative -- namely to take votes amongst the Developers and determine the number and identity of Developers. The two additional duties are exceptional: to stand in for the DPL when he's absent (with the tech ctte chair), and to adjudicate disputes about the constitution. Neither is supervisory in any case -- the difference being that supervision is an ongoing task, unlike both standing in while a new DPL is chosen, or adjudicating a dispute that's arisen. That doesn't mean taking on a supervisory role is bad or improper, though, just that it's not an unavoidable consequence of being Debian secretary. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Can we have some discussion on the why's and wherefores of invariant-less GFDL licensed works? Well, for my part, I agree with the main GR proposed by Anthony, which explains satisfactorily to me why even the invariant-less GFDL works run afoul of the GFDL. However, we also have heard that the FSF is going to have a new GFDL, or some other licensing regime. Dammitall, they won't actually *say*, so we can't tell. Despite lots of complaints about parts of the GFDL which have nothing to do with invariance, and RMS's acknowledgement that the GFDL is essentially broken in these regards and needs to be fixed, nothing has happened. I might be willing to compromise those points, but not if it causes RMS to decide that, well, gee, it doesn't really matter. Once more, I find that about this question, we are in a bind, because of the delay, delay, delay, we're talking to RMS... that has been going on for years. So, once more, I would like it if those who might know more (you know who you are) could say something about what their conversations have led to, and whether they think it is at all likely that a fixed GFDL will emerge. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:48:29PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: In summary, I don't think a pedantic reading of the constitution justifies delaying the vote; and I don't think there's anything much still to be said that would full up two weeks of discussion. Having the issue be undecided during the DPL debates doesn't seem much of a win either. Heh. I think it is a pedantic reading that cuts off any discussion two qweeksa after initia; proposal, no matter how interesting an alternate proposal appears on the ballot. That's not correct; the constitution says that the original proposer and sponsors can call for a vote anytime after the minimum discussion period is up -- not that they're not required to, and even if they do, discussion is not required to end, nor is the secretary required to immediately run the vote. Err, I am saying that. This is not a new interpretation; I have always maintained, often in public, that the DOS effect of rejected amendments can delay a vote indefinitely, and that the secretary must then step in and stop that. I can't say I'm impressed that you're sticking to an interpretation that allows the project to be rendered unable to make a decision without the secretary assuming the power to ignore amendments, particularly when an alternative reading that doesn't have that flaw is available. And yes, I did previously hold the same view up until the last vote, at which point I read the constitution more carefully. Anyway, I've got better things to do, so I'll see you all in another two weeks, when this vote will've been in discussion for two months. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract
Meh, -devel dropped. On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 10:27:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On 10 Feb 2006, Anthony Towns outgrape: That view, namely other people may propose ballots that aren't good enough, and it's my job to stop that, is precisely a supervisory one. The secretary is responsible for running the vote, and also has the final decision for the form of the ballot. It would be remiss of me to let a ballot go by which i consider incorrect. That's the way you see it, and it's an entirely fair view. It's not the only possible view, however. It would be just as possible to say I don't make the call on what's correct or not -- eg saying it was called `editorial amendments' because that's what the proposer thought it should be called, no other reason instead of it was called `editorial amendments' because I think that's the right thing to have called it. I think it'd also be easier on you, no more burdensome on the rest of us, and more efficient. It might be better at setting people's expectations: where they might expect the secretary to be unbiassed, or at least to pretend to be, presumably they wouldn't expect that of people proposing GRs. Obviously, YMMV, and it's YM that counts -- don't get me wrong, it's 100% appropriate for you to make the call which way you'll handle your role; I'm just saying I think the other choice would be better. Personally, I'd rather the secretarial role be as automatic as possible, even to the point where votes would be run without any human intervention. I've thought about that before, but I don't have the inclination to write any code for it. You know how to change the constitution. Currently, the secretaries role is far from being a rubber stamp. Hrm? I don't agree -- looking over the summary of ballot descriptions and setting 3:1 requirements seem incredibly minor to me; the rubber stamp aspect of running the vote and making announcements seems much more important. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: GFDL GR, vote please!
On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 03:22:28PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Anyway, I've got better things to do, so I'll see you all in another two weeks, when this vote will've been in discussion for two months. Actually, there's one other possibility: Branden, under 4.2(4) you're empowered to vary the minimum discussion period of 2 weeks for this vote by up to one week; given the discussion that's already been held, and the secretary's interpretation that the minimum discussion period begain on the 9th, are you willing to reduce the minimum discussion period to one week, so that we can begin voting on the 17th or 18th of February, concluding on the 4th or 5th of March? Manoj, I presume I'm correct in interpreting up to one week as allowing the minimum discussion period to be varied down, as well as up? Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
