FSF GFDL and "non free"

FSF GFDL and "non free"

Posted Jul 11, 2004 16:38 UTC (Sun) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)
In reply to: FSF GFDL and "non free" by dvdeug
Parent article: Debian postpones social contract changes

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.

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