[ Apologied for the delay in responding; I've had hardware issues stopping me seeing this ]
Don Armstrong writes: >On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Steve McIntyre wrote: >> What part of >> >> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups >> >> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of >> persons. >> >> allows for _any_ discrimination? > >None of it, apparently, which is one of the reasons why the DFSG is a >set of guidelines, not a mere definition. That's a convenient argument for ignoring whichever bits of the DFSG you don't like, it must be said. If you're going to selectively apply DFSG#5 as you see fit, then consensus grounded in the DFSG is never going to happen. >> Are you reading the same DFSG as me??? "Must not discriminate" is >> not in any sense vague - it does not leave any leeway for "allowable >> discrimination". > >Well, then why should effective discrimination be allowed? Surely >effective discrimination fits under "must not discriminate." As I've said, I don't consider "effective discrimination" to be a useful concept at all. That leaves _all_ licenses potentially infringing DFSG#5, depending entirely on local laws trumping license clauses. As we're trying to come up with a base level that we consider to be free, that doesn't help us in the slightest. It's grossly unfair to declare a license non-free because external factors may stop people from exercising the rights granted by that license. >In the end, we still come back to the fact that we're dealing with a >set of guidelines that needs to be thoughtfully applied to a >license. For many of these cases, there's no known bright line test, >where X is free, and Y is non free. [See the OSD v DFSG threads for >more examples...] The DFSG clearly needs to be tightened up and clarified, then. Or is the point of debate on -legal simply to justify the existence of -legal? -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Further comment on how I feel about IBM will appear once I've worked out whether they're being malicious or incompetent. Capital letters are forecast." Matthew Garrett, http://www.livejournal.com/users/mjg59/30675.html
