Theodor Ts'o wrote: >Hence, standards bodies that state that out of policy reasons, if >someone wants to make a non-interoperable version of a protocol, they >should start from scratch and not be able to leverage the existing >work of the protocol specifications, are in many ways making the exact >same argument about why it is "necessary" to prevent someone from >using the GPL using it as a base, possibly stemming confusion in the >marketplace.
But the GPL is modifiable. The preamble isn't. Yes, it would be nice if the preamble was. >So tell me again why the GPL text should be privileged? Because without us distributing it, we can distribute no GPLed works. This would make providing a Linux distribution rather difficult. Yes, this is hypocrisy. We arguably should alter the social contract to say "Debian will remain entirely free (except for two or three text files that we're required to distribute in order to actually be able to distribute any software whatsoever)", but it's not entirely clear how that would actually benefit anyone. Reality currently requires that we distribute around 1K of unmodifiable GPL preamble in order to be useful. That 1K buys us a lot. 1K gives us a modifiable kernel and a modifiable basic userland. We could relax our principles a little further and get a bunch of unmodifiable text files, but the payoff is much smaller. I think the line's in the right place now. In the end, even Debian is occasionally forced to bow to pragmatism, and I think the GPL case is one where we have no choice. In contrast, I don't think the GFDL/firmware/whatever cases are. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
