Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My copy of the DFSG does not say "The license must allow all > modifications and derived works, ..."
True, though it's hard to argue that was not actually the intended meaning of what was written, I think. But granted, it is possible. > The issue I've been addressing is the distinction between what the > DFSG actually says, and how it is interpreted. That's a feature, not a bug. Or, perhaps I should say that the fact that we're explicit about that is a feature rather than a bug, since that's a characteristic fundamental to language and not really unique to the DFSG. We just acknowledge the fact and work with it, rather than papering over it with a lot of pointless verbiage. A similar issue (the distinction between guidelines like the DFSG and a definition like the OSD, and that d-l believes that a definition of Free just Doesn't Work(tm)) has been discussed in quite a lot of detail. The interpretive process is part and parcel of the DFSG. We have a sort of case history (though only lately being formalized), various principles that we apply, etc. The Debian Free Software Guidelines are a fluid and flexible process for determining the freeness of a work. The document with the same title describes and directs that process, but isn't itself the process. > What it actually says isn't enough for our purposes -- you could say > it's too tolerant of licensing problems. Unfortunately, the way that > we express how it's interpreted is also inadequate -- what we say we > do is actually less tolerant than what we actually implement. There's > too many corner cases. If a particular corner case is significant enough or causes a lot of controversy, it's probably worth explicitly eliminating via a GR that modifies the DFSG. But it's important that we not throw up our hands and say "Ahh! Corner case!" whenever we find one, because we'd be making GR's all the time. Especially given all the nit-picking we have here; we'd likely need a GR for every license decision. -- Jeremy Hankins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
