Re: License FAQs

On Sat, Feb 21, 2004 at 09:33:35AM -0500, georgina o. economou wrote:
> Since my mailer is questionable, and I am in process of moving, so I have to use
> something like this, until I get a real connection and not the dial-up I'm currently using, so I'll just respond.

Ok, thanks for it.

> First, who are these debian-legal people that they consider themselves self-proclaimed keepers of the torch?  I think if anything is going to change I think it's what debian considers 'free' based on what I've seen on the foundation list.  I guess this is the real moving target, eh?

No, they are the advisor to our ftp-masters on what will be considered
as free by debian (or dfsg-free), and which complies with our social
contract. I think what other think free is their own problem, altough
the Open Source definition was at first based on the DFSG.

Also, this is guidelines we, as a voluntary project follow, in order to
not risk being sued by random discontented upstream. You will understand
that as a volunteer organization, we cannot afford to be sued,
especially in the US and their trigger happy legal system.

> As for debian-legal I cannot find their messages archived so I think that must be a secret club ala our old and defunct core team and since debian has some strange initiation rights I guess this is all hush-hush secret agent sorta stuff.  I also read in an U.K. mag that debian-Europe and debian-US disagree on this and purging debian of all non-Free (self-defined obviously) software. 

Sorry, but all debian mailing lists are fully public and archived. And a
simple google search for debain-legal will find it for you. Anyway, it
is at : 

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/

So, i don't really understand your aggressiveness, and anyone knowing
how debian works will find your assertion really laughable.

As for the non-free removal issue, it is indeed a a matter under
discussion, which will be brought to vote nextly, and we will see how it
comes out, accordying to the debian constituion and social contract,
which are freely available and well known. Also, sorry, but you should
change your lectures, there is no such things as debian-Europe or
debian-US, this is a ridicoulus assertion.

Please inform yourself.

> And how is all of this affected by the relationship between debian and Progeny? 

It does not, i think. In fact at least one of the Progeny employees are
subscribed to the debian-legal mailing list.

> Is debian the lobbying group for a business?  That brings back some really bad denotations from the 30's so let's hope not but you most certainly are _hinting_ that way.  I ask this because _Enquiring minds want to know_ and you of course brought it up so I take it you want to discuss it.  

What BS are you saying here ? The only thing that i was saying is that
the GFDL is currently under dubious freeness status, and that
documentation wanting to be distributed by debian should not use it, at
least until this issue is clarified. There is a huge freely online
available mailing list archive on this, and seriously, i am more than
sick of it, which is why i tried to send you this discussion, in order
to avoid a repeat of this flamage here.

Please try googling for GDFL and debian if you are more interested.

> Thanks and I'll forward your suggestion against the FDL on though you can 
> do the same. And o yeah, the minor changes are up on the licenses.html page now.  I guess we hit it at the right time.

Cool.

Friendly,

Sven Luther