| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
FSF GFDL and "non free"FSF GFDL and "non free"Posted Jul 9, 2004 22:18 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)In reply to: FSF GFDL and "non free" by copsewood Parent article: Debian postpones social contract changes
Consider for example, misuse of any software/documentation taking away the freedom of victims of racist abuse not to be targetted by hate crimes. [...] this could perhaps be handled by updating the DFSG to exclude such attacks on people's freedom, It is inherant in the nature of Free software and the DFSG that it is free for everyone. The racists, the egalitarians, the fundamentalists, the secularists, all of them. I don't look forward to a day when debian-legal argues about whether an article asking for money for a Israelite charity, or a Palesteinian charity, or an Iranian or Hutu charity is against the DFSG. It's designed to be neutral on that. Your solution does not solve the problem, of course. Religious statements of faith are going to be offensive (and possibly illegal in some places), even when entirely positive. Certain statements about programming languages can piss off some people. Free software gives you the right to change your system to make it work for you, and that may very well include removing personally offensive texts, no matter how innocous they may be to everyone else. [Your ten page essay is a] slight exaggeration There are invariant sections on FSF documentation that are probably about ten pages.You can always quote based on fair use, or consult with the author if a good reason for a license relaxation would allow for kinds of positive reuse not forseen by the author. OK, sometimes impractical - such is life. I can do the same thing for software. But the DFSG is designed to make sure I don't have to jump through hoops with "fair use" (which is very complex once you're dealing with more than one nation, and often even if you aren't.) It's there to make sure that I don't have to chase down the original author to reuse the source. The DFSG is designed so I have the right to modify and redistribute without asking anyone's permission. And that's what it comes down to.
(Log in to post comments)
FSF GFDL and "non free" Posted Jul 11, 2004 16:38 UTC (Sun) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] Your solution does not solve the problem, of course. Religious statements of faith are going to be offensive (and possibly illegal in some places), even when entirely positive. Certain statements about programming languages can piss off some people. Free software gives you the right to change your system to make it work for you, and that may very well include removing personally offensive texts, no matter how innocous they may be to everyone else.Yes, I accept that there are innumerable things a software user might complain about, many of which most people would find innocous. For example, my brother, who maintains a popular GPL'd XML parsing package was criticized for writing this in Java, in the sense that his product then required non-free support software (compiler/class library/VM?). But even RMS had to start writing free software using something else to develop it upon. As it is unrealistic to be able to get everyone to agree on everything, in the end this boils down to dispute resolution protocols. If a complaint, of a kind arguably but not explicitly covered by the DFSG, is made against mutable software, does the complainer have a right to have this removed from the whole of Debian free if it is maintained by another Debian developer who does not agree with requested changes ? Presumably the Debian community has some means of interpreting the DFSG to resolve this kind of dispute between a maintainer and a change requester if the 2 can't agree amongst themselves ? I accept that there are circumstances where the degree of mutability of the material at issue may in some cases make it easier for a change requester and maintainer to resolve this kind of dispute without involving other parties. The point I am making is that disputes of this kind are likely to occur anyway in fully mutable software or documentation, and if you need a resolution protocol for arguable cases, why not allow maintainer discretion over useful documents with generally uncontentious invariant sections ? If the Debian community were able to give greater freedom to maintainers who are signed up to the DFSG guidelines and social contract etc, by allowing them more discretion in common-sense cases, would this not encourage more software developers with an interest in free software to aspire to become Debian maintainers ? The reason I continue to question your almost but not completely convincing case is this: To a developer of free software who is a Debian development-community outsider, this kind of issue makes a distribution which I use and respect greatly from a technical point of view into something less attractive than it would otherwise be for me to participate actively in contributing more directly towards Debian development.
FSF GFDL and "non free" Posted Jul 12, 2004 19:06 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] I accept that there are innumerable things a software user might complain about, You're missing the point. If you don't like the public domain edition of the Dhammapada in Debian, you are free to mangle it until it becomes aligned with the Christian faith. That's what Free means. It doesn't mean that we will mangle it in Debian. if you need a resolution protocol for arguable cases, I don't understand what you're going on about here. Technical matters are left to the maintainer, though the Technical Committee can overrule in extreme cases. License matters are handled through debian-legal. The point I am making is that disputes of this kind are likely to occur anyway in fully mutable software or documentation, You can change it if you want. That doesn't mean that Debian is going to change it just because you want it changed. why not allow maintainer discretion over useful documents with generally uncontentious invariant sections ? Why have a DFSG at all then? Why not just give maintainers blanket discretion over any program's license?
|
|
||||||||||||