(Branden, I've BCC'd you on this mail since you're mentioned, as I don't expect that you follow every thread on -devel. It's a BCC to keep people from copying you on further mails in the thread and I won't copy you on it further.)
On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 04:17:24AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > Where's the official statement of Debian on this issue? Since when does Debian make official statements (or even form a collective opinion) on every little flawed argument people pose to mailing lists? You're arguing that, since Debian allows unmodifiable license texts in main, it should allow other unmodifiable stuff, too (or otherwise you're arguing nothing at all). That's a bogus argument and nobody is convinced by it, not the first time it was made or the twentieth. The existance or lack of "official statements" are completely irrelevant to the discussion. > www.debian.org tells me why mplayer can't be packaged - where does it > tell me what Debian calls "software"? The Social Contract #1 [1] says: "Debian will remain 100% free We provide the guidelines that we use to determine if a work is "free" in the document entitled "The Debian Free Software Guidelines"." This makes it extremely clear that, as far as the Social Contract is concerned, everything in Debian is software, covered by the DFSG. This is a discussion that's done and complete, settled by GR2004-003, and I'm not interested in rehashing those discussions yet again. (It's disappointing that on one hand, we have people insisting that every decision should go through a complete GR to involve the whole Project and refuse to accept any amount of consensus otherwise; while on the other hand, the few issues--such as this one--that actually do go through a GR and are firmly decided *still* come under debate again and again.) > The only hit for > > site:www.debian.org "license texts" > > brings me to a debian-legal discussion where your new DPL suggests that > the GFDL should be considered DFSG-free and invariant sections of up to > 5% should be considered DFSG-free. > > It seems the opinions in Debian about the GFDL have changed during the > last four years... Years? In http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/12/msg00245.html [2], less than one month later, Branden's final proposal no longer suggests that, but instead that the only invariant texts that should be allowed are license texts. It's a very normal and useful pattern to Debian figuring out hard problems: some ideas are tossed out (such as the one you reference above[1]), people debate them for a while, and opinions change, becoming better formed and more strongly grounded as a result of debate. [1] referring to the current "on hold" SC, per GR 2004-003: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 [2] The link on the DWN page is wrong; a currently accurate one is http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/11/msg00096.html or Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. [3] Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Glenn Maynard
