On Tuesday, Aug 12, 2003, at 14:47 US/Eastern, Sergey V. Spiridonov
wrote:
Oh, great, so maybe I'll finally have answers to my generic questions
to
FDL supporters: how a license which forbids to put the document on an
encrypted filesystem can be considered free? How a license which
forbids
Is it? Are you sure? Or do you plan to distribute encrypted Debian
CD's? ;)
It prohibits (paraphrasing) using technical measures to limit access to
the work. Encryption definitely seems to count. So would ACLs or
permission bits, methinks.
So, it appears that if I have a non word-readable home directory,
especially if it happens to be over crypto-loopback, I can't store FDL
documents in $HOME.
It is wrong to pick up *some* inconveniences (and even negative
aspects) and call the license non-free. Correct way is to sum up all
pros and cons for the majority of people on the long terms.
"some inconveniences" like unmodifiable sections, restrictions on
crypto, not being able to edit in my preferred format, and many other
things brought up on this list?
Would these "inconveniences" be OK for computer programs?
It's nice to know that you consider freedom just a convenience. I'm
sorry, but we --- and the Social Contract makes it very clear ---
consider freedom a principal, not a convenience. That's why we demand
it. And that's why even a _single_ non-free part of a piece of software
(in the "not hardware" sense) is enough that we don't distribute it in
main.
I still wonder why people want to put stuff and stuff in main,
regardless of the consequences. The main section is for FREE SOFTWARE,
do you understand what it means? Not half-free software, not "free
enough" software. Free software.
</rant>
I still wonder why people with the same ardour and consistency do not
speak about distribution of software in the non-free section? Why
Debian distributes non-free?
The Social Contract says why: As a service to our users. You'll find a
lot of people here (hi, Branden!) would like to change that and get rid
of non-free.
Oh, yeah, and how exactly is the existence of non-free an argument to
put not-quite-free software in main?
