FSF GFDL and "non free" [LWN.net]

FSF GFDL and "non free"

Posted Jul 12, 2004 19:06 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)
In reply to: FSF GFDL and "non free" by copsewood
Parent article: Debian postpones social contract changes

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?

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