On Sun, 8 Jan 2012 23:17:02 +0100 Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 10:40:35PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: > > I think that this is exactly what people opposing to copyright > > assignment want to avoid: giving permission to re-license under yet > > unknown terms. > > I don't think you should make absolute statements for *all* the people > opposing copyright assignments, while being yourself only one of them.
I didn't intend to make *absolute* statements. I acknowledge that I should have written "what *some* people opposing", but unfortunately that "some" failed to come out of my keyboard... Sorry about that. Anyway, I am under the impression that the number of those "some people" is significant. [...] > I'm under the *impression* that an important amount of people objecting > copyright assignments do so to avoid the risk that their contributions > get re-licensed under terms that go against their moral beliefs about > software freedom. That is why I won't sign a copyright assignment to a > for-profit entity. Exactly. And, since I have been repeatedly disappointed by non-profit organizations too, I personally strongly dislike copyright assignment to *any* entity, not just to for-profit ones. [...] > I understand that not all DFSG-free licenses are equal in terms of how > they represent moral beliefs of people (e.g. I'm myself more of a > copyleft kind of guy than a *BSD kind of guy). But it is the largest > horizon of software freedom beliefs we should expect from people who > have contributed to the *Debian* website. As I said, some people may dislike giving blanket permission to re-license under yet unknown terms, since they may think that some licenses officially accepted by the Debian Project are in fact non-free. You know at least some examples, hence there's no need to explicitly list them... > Strategically, it seems to me > that either we stick to that set of licenses, or we have to pick a > single license upfront. As I said, I think a single license (or, anyway, a very small number of possible licenses, from which the contributor may choose one) should be picked upfront. [...] > > Moreover, "any DFSG-free license" is quite vague. > > Who decides which licenses are DFSG-free and which are not? > > The Debian project has an official position on which licenses are > DFSG-free and which are not. I believe you know that very well. Yes, and not everybody agrees with that official position, as you know. > > We will all appreciate if you could avoid hijacking this discussion to > push agendas that object the current stance of the Debian project on > which licenses are DFSG-free and which are not. Those discussions do not > belong to this (already crowded) bug log. I agree, and that is exactly the reason why I avoided making any specific example: I didn't want to drive the discussion far away from the important point we are talking about. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
pgpB7ygdk3lX9.pgp
Description: PGP signature
