Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> What I was saying that if advance approval was the practice, > Advance approval will never happen in any form that I think you'd find > useful. If we "advance approved" something it would mean that we cound > not act if we later discovered a non-free facet of it that we'd missed > originally. We don't want to paint ourselves into a corner that way.
I wasn't asking for anything binding, maybe advance approval is not quite the right word. Obviously, a patent or some other problem could easily chuck some piece of software into non-free. I also wasn't asking for a formal certification program like OSI. Finally, license approval does not imply software approval. The decision as to whether a piece of software is non-free is going to be more restrictive than just whether or not it is DFSG compliant, but that's why I was only asking for better assurance, not absolute assurance. Better assurance that Debian will find a license acceptable when applied to software and a coordinated way for Debian to provide feedback on licenses under development means that Debian can have a greater impact on licenses under development and much less confusing and delayed feedback process. Maybe the place to start is just coordinated feedback in a timely and organized capacity. Daniel
