Marcus wrote: > On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 03:22:18PM +0100, Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote: > > Though the four freedoms of the FSF is a political statement. "These > > are rights everyone should have when it comes to functional software" > > - they're easily understandable and they're useful for advocacy and > > explaining free software. > > Well, Debian is a political mvovement, and I don't think there is much > disagreement about those particular freedoms.
Sure, but my point was that the four freedoms are fine for the advocacy/explaining part but (possibly, I'm not certain) too vague to be useful as the *only* guidelines for debian-legal. I.e, freedom to redistribute copies. A license that would only allow distribution of software non-commercially would be unusable for Debian, but using only the four freedoms, there's seemingly nothing wrong with such a license. Note that RMS in his explanation of the four freedoms at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html does state that commercial redistribution has to be allowed. This helps make my point (err, I think) that the four freedoms, as written, are not complete legal guidelines that cover every case. They're still great and I agree with you, software that doesn't have the four freedoms are not free software. Still, the DFSG are a lot more detailed (or, tries to be). Also note that RMS has said (if I recall correctly) that he does not think that freedom 3 is necessary for non-functional works. (E.g. the GNU manifesto.) > Actually, I don't believe it (although I am not sure, as I have no special > insight into such matters). The guidelines are pretty clear, basically, and > RMS had an amazing consistent stance upon these issues since a couple of > years. In corner cases, the matter is discussed and it seems to me RMS makes > a final decision. Huh? Don't they have like, an elected board or some kind of democracy? > I think the four freedoms come closest to a definition of free software as > you can get. Agreed. What I'm unsure of is whether that definition is detailed enough to work consistently as guidelines for debian-legal. > Issues like patents and other funky stuff are in the process > of being worked out (some of this work will go into the GPLv3, IIRC). So I hear. Here's to hoping that they deal with trademarks too - there's been some nasty stuff like the d20 STL coming up lately. > You can say what you want about the FSF and RMS, <snip stuff I knew> Oh, I'm not interested in saying anything negative about them, I hope to make that clear. I am a very big fan. I agree with most everything RMS has written and I constantly refer people to Moglen's "Anarchism Triumphant" (it's one of my favourite essays). I certainly agree with the statement that all published software should be free. Sunnanvind.
