Branden Robinson writes: > On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 10:54:37AM +0200, Frank Mittelbach wrote: > > However I think it would be a poor solution to argue legally that you > > are able to ignore Don's explicit wishes simply because he is a > > Computer Scientist rather than a lawyer and was unable to write it up > > in legal lingua without potential loopholes > > Please don't troll. No one is arguing that the author's explicit
I don't troll > requests can be evaded on a technicality. Copyright law in Berne > Convention countries sees to it that we cannot. Where there is doubt, > "all rights reserved" is generally the controlling status. > > It is disappointing that you conceive of the Debian Project as > attempting to parse and lawyer its way into taking advantage of a > licensor when we've spent the past few weeks demonstrating just how > unambiguous we require a license to be before we regard it as > DFSG-compliant. We are not in the habit of putting words into the > mouths of copyright holders; where there is doubt or confusion, we > make conservative assumptions about the author's intent until and unless > that intent can be clarified, and in the meantime we assume that a > license is not DFSG-compliant. I don't conceive anything of the Debian Project as a whole. I raised my concern about some people arguing in this direction (it happens more than once in the various threads). > Your presumption is not warranted by any evidence. it unfortunately is. > I'm a difficult > person to offend, but you've managed to do it with this careless and > spiteful characterization of the Debian Project. sorry if you are offended. Again I haven't make any characterization of the Debian Project (spiteful or otherwise) I expressed my concern that arguing only legally would be a poor path (something which you seem to second, and what you think doesn't happen). It did however happen, several times by individuals and that was all I was referring to. Perhaps you missed those posts which wouldn't be surprising given the number of posts on the whole subject. For example http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00318.html Where Thomas said: > What Don Knuth says is really quite irrelevant. If he's given > permission to use the name (which tripman sure looks like), then it's > that permission that matters, even if he later regrets his > carelessness. This type of argument chain showed up several times during the discussions and I wanted to express my feeling that it would not be a good position to put up. I had no intention to imply that this is my understanding of the general policy of the Debian Project and I don't really think that I did. So please check also with ourself if "troll", "careless", "spiteful" are the right words in the circumstances. regards frank
