On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 09:35:31PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote: > You sound like you don't actually want to discuss these things, despite > previously claiming that you do. Make up your mind. I'm not saying consult the > rest of the project on every little decision, but applying dogmatic > interpretations of the DFSG is a big decision, and this *needs* to be > communicated to the rest of the project. The various tests, controversial > interpretations like choice of venue, etc. These are not definitively > demostrable within the DFSG.
I don't mind discussing them. I'll admit to not caring to discuss six things (several of which seem to me to be self-evidently non-free, such as arbitrary termination) simultaneously. > 2) Steve McIntyre has continually suggested codifying the various things in > the > DFSG. I fully agree with this. If you really truly believe that your > interpretations are shared by the rest of the project, then you have nothing > to > fear from this, and you only stand to gain. There's certainly something to lose from this being done incorrectly. An amendment saying "The license may not require a choice of venue" would inevitably set a precedent: for every other weird restriction that we see, the person trying to push it into Debian would say: "Hey! You had to have a GR and change the DFSG to call choice of venue non-free! I demand a GR for my 'say the Pledge of Allegiance' restriction, too!" I'm not really against it in principle; it's just the side-effects that worry me. (I keep seeing assurances that it won't come to that, but I really havn't been very reassured.) > 3) As I stated earlier, I liked the news post to DWN. Keep those up for big > things like new tests and interesting new interpretations. > > 4) Announce major changes to things to -devel-announce. If a major license is > declared as non-free, announce it to -devel or -devel-announce (maybe the > -devel first in order to allow dissenters to weigh in before going for the > broader -devel-announce). > > 5) Possibly start -legal-announce for summaries and such I don't have a problem with any of this, but this is all after-the-fact stuff: things to do after a big discussion, forming a list consensus, and writing summaries. It sounds like what you want it things to happen to draw people into the discussion before we find ourself at a consensus (that's certainly better than doing so after, since that results in the discussion rebooting). -- Glenn Maynard
