On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:58:36PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > Matthew Palmer writes: > >On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:35:49PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > > >> I'd be inclined to say that countries that limit exports of technology > >> are broken and we should treat them as if they don't exist, even though > > > >But it's really dangerous to do so. Allowing such a licence into Debian > >could result in our users to fall foul of situations just like these. > > If we really think this is a major problem (and I'm not arguing > against you, BTW), then why not get this codified into the DFSG via a > GR? Get everybody[*] to agree on this, then we won't have to have this > argument over and over again.
I think that this issue might be enough to get a change or two to the DFSG made. Compelled unrelated distribution and compelling the grant of a separate licence are both issues that I think need specific mention. The latter can probably be accomodated by a rewording of DFSG #3, but I think we're going to need a DFSG #11 for the former problem. > People seem very leery of trying to > update the DFSG, and it's not clear why. Several reasons that I've come up with: 1) A fuckup in wording could very easily see a lot of software thrown out or brought in. 2) The stability of the DFSG is a very major rock we stand on. As Sven Luther has mentioned, upstreams kind of rely on us not to go changing our minds every couple of weeks, and a change to the DFSG could see some pretty major upheavals. 3) To be thorough, after any DFSG change, we should check every package in the archive and throw anything out which doesn't comply with the new! shiny! DFSG. That's a lot of work. 4) Nobody's been real keen to do the work for it, considering that we've been quite happy in our little world. I welcome the new blood that appears to have cropped up on d-legal recently with these issues -- it's forced a re-evaluation of how we do business. And I think that carefully considered DFSG modifications may end up being how business is done in the future. - Matt
