On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 03:14:10PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > That's one of those reasons whice are of no concern of ours. It's also > > irrelevant. There are other reasons which led to "We must force the > > permanent inclusion of our dogma in all our manuals", and none of > > those are relevant either - none of them result in the FDL. The FSF > > has chosen invariant sections as a goal in its own right. > > I don't know what those other reasons are; as far as I can tell, they > haven't been published by the FSF. > > Nor has the FSF ever said that it has chosen invariant sections as a > goal in its own right: and why would they?
I'm not really sure *why*, but RMS has been pretty clear in the past few days. > > > I believe this is a goal that Debian > > > also shares. > > > > I'm not sure why you think that. Debian's goals are enumerated here: > > http://www.debian.org/social_contract > > > > I don't see anything there which approximates: > > > > "to make sure that everyone who gets free software understands the > > rights they have and the importance of free software." > > > > Debian has always been technically oriented, not politically. > > Debian's goals are enumerated in many many places. Name these places. > The Social > Contract is just that, it is not the "definitive statement of Debian's > goals". In fact, it isn't a statement of *goals* at all. So provide something which backs up your position, instead of handwaving. I cited the only document I know of which covers this sort of thing; do you have *anything* relevant in mind? > > > > > Debian also > > > > > does an awful lot to try and make sure too. > > > > > > > > I haven't noticed any such attempts. > > > > > > Really? Go look at the web page. > > > > I looked, and within 20 seconds I had found the exact opposite of the > > stated goal of the FSF. > > > > http://www.debian.org/intro/free > > Huh? RIGHT THERE is a statement about why free software is > important. Now Debian does not in general adhere to the notion that > the words "free software" are more important than the words "open > source", though I would note that the former is vastly more common in > Debian's own writing than the latter, so there is some kind of > preference. > > Of course we do not agree with *every* goal of the FSF, nor should we. > > You said there were no attempts to express the importance of free > software, and right there, on that page, is a description of the > importance of free software. And you consider this to be "doing an awful lot to try and make sure [...]"? One purely descriptive page? Sorry, but you aren't being very convincing here. That aside, I was referencing the stated (by RMS, on this list, in the past few days) goals of the FSF, rather than the one you have invented and assigned to them. > > Aside from this one page, I found nothing (in a few minutes browsing) > > under www.debian.org that dealt with the subject of what and why free > > software is. Hardly an "awful lot". > > The Social Contract also expresses this importance. And the top level > page does too. I invite you to cite the text which you think says this, because I sure can't see it - and these are not lengthly documents. > As does www.debian.org/intro/about. It is also discussed in the > Debian GNU/Linux FAQ (www.debian.org/doc/FAQ). That's just from about > one minute of my quick look through the site map. Again, despite your claims, there does not appear to be any such thing in these documents. If you think otherwise, I again invite you to cite the relevant text. > > *How* is it an attempt to do that? Seems to me, it's an attempt to > > meet our obligations of distributing the licenses in a suitably > > prominent fashion. > > The licenses do not require the notice--not at all. That's highly questionable. See clause 1 of the GPL, notably "conspicuously and appropriately". We choose to satisfy clauses such as this by putting notices in various places, including the default motd. > > I certainly can't see anything in that paragraph, or in > > /usr/share/doc/*/copyright, which deals with "the importance of free > > software". > > I took a look at /usr/share/common-licenses on my system, which > contains the following files: > > Artistic BSD GPL GPL-2 LGPL LGPL-2 LGPL-2.1 > > Of these seven, six of them contain descriptions about why free > software is important. All of them are concerned to explain the > users' rights. And that is relevant to the quoted paragraph how, exactly? It didn't even mention common-licenses. Also: - Two of those are symlinks, not regular files - The preamble in the (three) GPL variations is pretty much identical. Counting that five times is hardly sensible. - That's still one short, so I presume you are claiming that the Artistic license contains something equivalent, but I just read it, and it definitely doesn't. Obviously the BSD license does not. > The licenses require that we distribute these, but I > venture to say that even if they didn't we would still do so. In the case of the GPL, we would not, because the text is non-modifiable and therefore non-free. Which reduces us to no such texts. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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